People run for different reasons—exercise, competition, creativity, to win, to get somewhere, to leave somewhere.  There are a lot of reasons to run and a lot of ways to run as well.  We take things head on or we avoid them, and if we’re honest, we can see we’ve all done it.  Whether it’s something we can’t stop talking about or something we never bring up, we’re running in a specific direction and running means we’re anywhere but where we are in the moment.  We can’t escape the moment no matter how uncomfortable. Thinking you can escape life is the problem—we can never escape life.  Life is all the moments that happen when we’re working toward something and we can’t get to where we’re going without being in the moments happening right now. 

Transition and transformation are far from simple things—even though some changes are easier than others.  The act of taking away what once was and building something new takes a lot and sometimes it’s a matter of building something only we can see.  Avoiding what it takes to get there will never get us there.  Change is messy and chaotic and even ugly at times but avoiding the work required delays the results—and those results have a way of finding us regardless of what we do.  Change is about persistence and perseverance as well as purpose and passion.  Sometimes the pieces of our past need to be dealt with to pave the way for the future we’ve been envisioning. 

Sometimes when we least expect it we become exactly what we were trying to be.   Suddenly we wake up and we’ve transformed into the life we always wanted.  The things we struggled with make sense.  The routine shifts and what seemed daunting is effortless.  There are no more tests, we’ve stopped running and we embrace the life we live.  As hard as it may be, I want to add that sometimes it takes a loss to remind us of what we always were.  The things that no longer serve, the job that falls apart, the doors that seem to stay closed no matter how hard we push—all those things guide us to what we want.  More importantly, they guide us to what we need to get what we want.  So all of this is to say that we need to stop running—we may think we’re running for our health but we’ve been avoiding the truth.  We need to slow down to see where we’re at.  And sometimes where we’re at is exactly where we need to be.