Generational Themes

Despite being neck-deep into the 'condo project' as I now call it, the complete dismantling of my parents' condo and lives, I managed some consistent running this weekend- I can't in good conscience call it 'training' anymore, as my goal is just to RUN, no matter how much or how far.

Saturday not so great, but Sunday, after my food fest the previous eve, was actually decent! Despite the 80 degree temps and ridiculous humidity (and this at 7AM!) Sunday I took on the Griffin loop and had some very nice stretches...I almost felt 'normal' for a runner...meaning someone who can keep a gait up for some time (more than a mile at a time?) and not have to stop every 5 minutes to regroup....LOL. I suppose that sounds like a running snob to newbies... and I guess It's 'normal' for folks like me who had better levels of fitness who are in essence starting over.

What my body goes through is just an echo of my mind, I know this. Inside the cauldron of mine and my mother's experience is a link to her past and on down to my son's, who carries on the struggle of adjustment to life events that can feel too large to carry. Reading her letters, journals, snippets of what she thought and felt about herself and her family read like a sad lament, with one constant question: why can't I change? why suffer so? why me?

I think everyone who realizes what their 'problem' is, whether born with, discovered through trauma, or inflicted by events (what Candice calls the karmic payment), must confront the same process of losing their innocence about the 'fairness' of life. We seem to carry an almost child-like hope that only good and easy things will come to us, so that, like children, we can remove ourselves from the work of growth. If I have a strength it is a lack of such fantasy- maybe as the last child I saw only too well what 'opting out' was like, as I watched my mother attempt to hide in the corner of her place on the couch, in a book, or deep into herself- away from any stress from the outside world.

I embrace The Work, even as I express my constant frustrations with it! I know there is a price-tag to everything we take on, as a debt to ourselves and future generations. Whatever seeds we plant into our own lives, good or ill, flower along happily disseminating every where around us; into our past, our future and dreams. I hang on with a thread of hope that the way forward is still open for the 'happy outcome'- for Mother Earth and all of Her children. But folks, I'll be honest: it will take bigger forces that we know to induce a sea-change in the destructive outcome we are creating... I seek peace, I seek the deep stillness inside to keep an eye out for my True Self, who despite everything looks out at the world with eyes of pathos and compassion...I know how tough it is- call out for allies! Perhaps the path is already laid, and we just need to find it!!