The Patience to Dream

There was one particular run I went on with Dad that I still find myself thinking of and not just because it was January and you knew somewhere a thousand miles to the north somebody was scraping ice off their windshield while you were running shirtless beneath the Florida sun and at that moment the only thing you felt as you thought about that poor bastard scraping ice wasn't guilt or pity but instead the sweat start to collect on your back and the not-so-cold-January-air fill your lungs as you kept running and then maybe when you were done thinking of Minnesota and Michigan and Canada and the people who choose to live there you'd think about whether you'd have beer or wine or maybe even whiskey with dinner. 


All of the runs were special in that way, in how they allowed you to appreciate that you had a Dad, an excellent one, one you could go for runs with and ask him questions you hadn't quite figured out yet. Where you could listen to him talk about his wife and his marriage and still hear the spark, or run along as he talked about what Joseph and Ellie and Amelia were doing and how proud he was, so genuinely proud and excited. Where you could run beside him and not say anything for a few minutes, just breathe and run, but that be more than enough. 

So why one run in particular? 


We were running along South Lagoon and talking about 2012 and what it could be for both of us when Dad mentioned these lines from the Tao:

I have thought about those lines many times since then, not just because they are simple and beautiful. I'll write them down on an envelope or scrap piece of paper and stuff it in my jean pocket so when I'm rummaging through my pockets at random parts of the day [insert joke here], I'll pull the scrap paper out and be reminded not only of the lines but the run, and they are both good things to be reminded of.  

Patience has never come naturally to me. It was a word I associated with mediocrity, almost always an excuse for non-action. Accomplishment was action. Idleness was waste. And so life was simple but a struggle, always a struggle. There was always something to be done, something that needed to be done, because I had to keep moving, even if the water was too muddy to see where all this motion was actually taking me. So I'd write when I didn't really feel like writing because scripts don't write themselves, and I'd train when I didn't really want to train because that was all part of getting to the starting line. And eventually the grind wears on you until the things you love become the things you hate because it is all forced and there is no time to rest and breathe and let the water settle.  

A few days ago, I went through my little copy of the Tao that Dad gave me to re-read the lines about muddy water but instead I stumbled across this:

It's been there all along -- the home-runs are hit when you swing naturally, never when you swing for the fences. The right person always seems to come along "when you least expected it." The best writing comes when you're not trying to do your best writing. 

I spent the last six years writing down the same goals and grinding my teeth in anguish when I got to the end of each year and the debt wasn't paid off and the script wasn't sold. I'd wonder why I was fighting so hard and getting nowhere, why I felt like such a failure. 


How much better it is to realize that the scripts will sell when it is ready to be sold. Even better to be happy that I haven't sold a script yet, because it probably wouldn't have been very good, and I wouldn't have done the races I've done, or struggled through debt and learned what I have about money and its value. I would have never met Kristin. And I would have never gone for that run.


My life and everything in it would be different, and I'm not sure for the better. 


As it is now, the mud continues to settle and each day it feels as though things are falling into place.