Racing to Happiness

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.