I have a
reoccurring theme in my life. It goes
something like this. I start to race, it
goes pretty well, I want to race more, I do race more, other parts of my life
need attention and then I have to make a decision – do I continue to race no
matter what and continue to chase my racing goals, or do I attend to the other
parts a bit more and let go of the race.
I think this
is a very human problem, whether you are a Mom, Dad, athlete, musician, actor,
professor, whatever. Where do we put our
energy? What is good enough? Matt asked
me the question long ago – “When will you be satisfied with racing, when will
you have achieved enough?” Winning the local race, national race, world cup,
Olympics? Where is that magic line we are looking for, so that when you cross
that finish line, in that position, you finally win satisfaction? And does satisfaction bring about happiness?
I remember
the day when I had to make the decision to continue racing with Ava – do I want
to keep pushing forward, or is it time to slow down or stop. But the real decision I realized I needed to
make was “What do I want out of this life?” And after some reflection, I
realized what I wanted was to be happy.
Now this sounds ridiculous I know, but at that point, I think it was
probably the first time I realized that the main thing I wanted in this life
was to be happy. This for me was a turning
point. Realizing for my first time that
my primary goal was happiness, I now only had to ask myself, “What makes me
happy?”. And believe it or not, for me this was an easy question.
There are
thousands, and perhaps millions of things that make me happy, and they are
luckily, amazingly easy to find, and obtain.
Being with Ava made me happy, taking her for bike rides to beautiful
places made me happy, playing music makes me happy, spending time
with Matt makes me happy, talking to my friends, my family makes me happy. Seeing fireflies makes me ridiculously
happy. Racing can make me very
happy. But here I begin to approach a
line. For racing to make me happy, I
still need to be able to enjoy the little things in life. If racing starts to take up so much of my
attention that I no longer have time for music, family and friends, then I
begin to sacrifice the many things that make me happy for the goal of
racing.
And there it
is – my answer is so clear, perhaps clearer to me than ever as I write
this. For my life to run well my first
goal is happiness. For me to be happy, I like to do and experience the various
things that make me happy. If I am not
careful, it is easy for me to let racing start to edge out happiness as the
primary goal in my life. And that is
when things start to get out of balance.
I don’t have time for friends and family because I am racing. I don’t have time for music, I am racing. And
I will admit to this – I don’t have time to be happy, I am racing. I will be happy when I have finished racing… oops.
And this is
the point at which I am out of balance, I want more time to train, but life is
in the way, that pesky life thing that stops me from training. If only there
was less life so I could train more and be a better racer. And it is only writing these words that I can
laugh at how ridiculous these thoughts sound on paper, because they seem
perfectly justified when I hear them in my head at the time. And luckily I have
my brave husband, who gently steps in the way of the race track, and says as carefully
as one can hold a red flag up to a charging bull “are you sure you want to be
racing right now?” and yes we crash, because I was racing and he asked me to
change my pace. But as I slow down a bit, I am able to look around at all the
things around me, this life, that I was just rushing past, and it slowly starts
to occur to me that I started racing through life, instead of just racing a
race. I am then able to reset my goal to “happiness” and return to life.
Don’t get me
wrong. I love racing, but sometimes it
is that wrong kind of love, like when you obsess about someone and you start to
become that creepy kid stalking your loved one, or holding on to them too tight
and too often. It is when I let racing
be a fun thing that I do along with the other things that make me happy, that
my life really works.
Yes, this
entry comes about after I needed to make decisions with my family about how we were
going to spend our summer, our precious few months of warm, beautiful sunshine,
precious weeks off as a family. Do I
train to be the best triathlete I can be? Does our family travel to the races
and does that become our focus? How much of that can we balance and still show
our children the alpine wildflower blooms in the mountains, tent in the
mountains under fields of stars, spend long afternoons at the pool swimming
with our friends, riding bikes around town to get snow cones?
We decided
on two races, that were fairly close to Corvallis, Black Diamond Xterra and
Portland Xterra. I trained when it fit
into our summer activities. I was able
to do two huge road rides as Matt and I traded off riding to our vacation spots
on the coast and to Bend. They were
beautiful days on the bike seeing miles of Oregon from the uninhibited view of
my bicycle. They will stand out in my
mind as some of the most beautiful rides I have done in my life. Matt also gave me a whole day to go running
in the mountains. I ran Iron Mountain, Cone
Mountain and Browder Ridge in one day while the wildflowers were in peak
bloom. My mind could barely understand
the colours I was seeing all at once.
There was one spot on the shoulder of Cone Mountain where I actually had
to run back and see the flowers for a second and third time.
Then my friend
Diane Leclerc arrived from Quebec with her three beautiful children and husband
Joel. Diane actually radiates happiness
so vividly I am pretty sure she creates her own magic. Our family was happy to fall under the spell. Diane fills every moment with beauty and
fun. We would all ride our bikes to get snow
cones, go swimming at Osborne, pick fresh blueberries, make a quick batch of
berry sauce with no recipe that was perfect.
We climbed mountains, swam in hot springs, mountain biked through old
growth forest giggling wildly and whooping as dark approached. Our children played tag, picked endless
bouquets of flowers, ate far too much candy and had the kind of time only
children (and Diane) can have in the summer.
Diane is what happens when I live life for happiness. And yet it was her that insisted I go
race. “You love it Karen, you need to do
it,” She said, giving me the most serious look she could muster before
bursting out laughing. She understands
at once the seriousness of doing what I love and the silliness of what I do.
And Voila, I
am able to race with lightness and ease and sense of humour again. Ava and Miles also raced and had a wonderful
time playing with Mel’s wonderful sons. Matt
bought a fishing rod and everyone went fishing in the lakes. And though I struggle with that line, I know
that I crossed the finish line of these last two races with my life in balance –
at least for now. I know that I will get out of balance again, and I will need
Matt to bravely stand in front of me and say “Karen, are you racing for
happiness or for racing?” and I will have to examine my motives. This will happen over and over. And
that is why I am glad I married him, he makes me happy.
