The Only Constant Is Change

When I started running four months ago there was no agenda. It was just a dare: "See if you can do this". I was slow and labored. But somehow the intensity of my feet pounding on the belt, the gasping for breath, the beading sweat gradually became an even pace. The drone became hypnosis. I did it: I adapted. I grew. At first, I simply wanted to be stronger. I wanted to feel faster, sleeker, more reliable; like the silky lines of a new car, hard and shiny and built for speed. But slowly, clawing to move the red decimals as they ascended on the treadmill screen in front of me, I moved forward and yes, eventually began to change in spirit and shape.

I just watched a magnificent PBS documentary, Savage Earth, about volcanoes--Mt. St. Helens specifically--and how they change their surrounding landscape in a fraction of an instant. But that's just the explosion part. The shift, the stupefying destruction and eventual overhaul of a spectacular bang is really the result of an agonizingly slow effort at growth. The split in the earth's crust where volcanoes form is visible, actually visible right now, in the shape of a giant chasm-like faultline somewhere in Iceland. It's separating Iceland from the rest of North America at a rate of one inch per year. It's taking forever, but it's expanding. That sounds more like the change I know: contract, swell, widen. Inch by inch. Slowly, slowly...slowly.

When I decided things had to change I thought it might be like a blitz. Lights out, head between knees, everything into sudden oblivion and then all quiet. I've got the all quiet part down pat. But there's a big faultline between deciding to change and changing. It's taking my version of millenia. I'm scared to leave my job. Not because it's a good job. Not because it makes me stronger or better in any way. I'm scared because I've been one dormant hill on a map for awhile and I'm not sure what I'll do if I become a glowing, ingnited volcano ready to crack and split and become something else.

Running's wonderful because change feels tangible with each forward step. Time is measured in seconds and minutes, not aeons. I need to see those little red decimal numbers ticking along to the beat of my stride. They remind me that I'm going somewhere. I'm closer to the exlposion than I think.

It'll be okay to contract, swell and break apart.