"We all want progress, but
if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking
back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the
most progressive."-- C. S. Lewis
"Begin at the beginning and
go on till you come to the end; then stop." -- Lewis Carroll
I am a collector of quotes. I love to find a quote that expresses what I can say more eloquently than I can say it. These three, to me, sum up what I need to know about my journey. First, that I must be moving, second that I must be moving in the right direction, and third that I must keep moving until I reach my destination.
There have been times in my life when each of these components has been the most difficult. During the depth of my depression, movement itself seemed impossible. Dragging my body out of bed required effort that I just couldn't muster, and so it seemed much easier to pull the covers over my head for another hour, to shut myself in my room for another day, and to stall any progress I'd been making in my life. Interspersed with these periods of depression were periods of frenetic movement. This was a time of great activity, but it wasn't action. I could barely sit still, and yet I got very little done. Or I'd be productive with school but all the rest of the tasks I filled up my day with were just spiralling me deeper into the wrong direction. I was taking many steps, but I wasn't making any progress. Most of my energy was spent self-soothing or self-destructing. I leapt from crisis to crisis without any real growth in between, and my life revolved around staying just well enough to avoid a catastrophe but not well enough to challenge the way I'd been living my life.
Now, I keep myself busy. I definitely have the step-taking part of the equation mastered. I'll allow myself a few minutes to rest here and there, but I know that ruminating isn't good for me, that isolating only makes the devil on my shoulder start to sound logical. And most days, I am at least aware of which direction I'm walking on my journey. I literally have moments where I am so conflicted about what path to take that I will walk a hundred feet down the street, abruptly turn around, walk back two hundred feet in the opposite direction, turn around, and then continue down my original path. The constant conflict in my head-- do I let go of old ways even though it's scary or do I retreat to them when I feel threatened?-- plays itself out as I bounce down the street like a ping pong ball. But some days, I am able to choose the right path and walk down it with conviction or at least catch myself when I'm walking down the wrong path and try to find one that's more progressive.
So now, once I've managed to walk and walk with the proper direction, I must prod myself to keep walking until I reach my destination. This is difficult, too. Sometimes, I get tired of walking. I wish I could just fly to wherever this final destination is. So I stop walking and get lost in a reverie, flapping my wings like an idiot on the side of the street thinking that if I wish for it hard enough, then it will work. Or I sit down on a stone to catch my breath and find myself rolling down the hill in the wrong direction. Or I simply play the childhood game of "Are we there yet?" I ask how long it's been, how far it's been, how many minutes are left so often that there are only tiny fragments of life lived in between the constant tabulating. When I used to be injured and stuck on the elliptical, I would calculate every minute what fraction of the way done I was, cheering myself on with "you are 7/16 of the way there!" Since I've started running marathons and realized the depressing sound of "you are 1/4 of the way there" when I've already been running for an hour, I've seen the beauty of the mile mark. Don't look at the race as a whole because it's just too intimidating. Your job is to make it alive to the next mile mark, approximating goal pace. If you accomplish your job this time and then focus on your new job, the next mile mark, the next goal pace, you will get to the finish without ever having to face the overwhelming distance before you. In your head, you get lost-- you think you cannot do it. But if you can simply shut your brain off, your body knows what it's doing. The body has the skill of proprioception, of knowing where it is in space, even with your eyes closed.
So here comes the final quote, a favorite of mine:
"Try again. Fail again. Fail better." -- Samuel Beckett
