Living on the brink of...sanity

I guess I expected to have a lot to say in the last week of my first Body for Life Challenge, but it turned out that I was consumed with actually finishing it, which didn't leave a lot of time for contemplation. Likewise, I thought I would have some big emotional wrapup at the end, when all was said and done, but I found that I wasn't so much transitioning back to my normal life as beginning a new kind of life. Because of this, I didn't ever really have a large emotional epiphany. I finished my last official workouts, we took our pictures, and I went on with what's now become my practice of making my physical health a priority through sensible diet and regular exercise.

Well, as I've stated several times, it has been my intention from day one to do the twelve week challenge twice, back to back, with only a minimal break in between. Well, I start my second challenge tomorrow. And so, after almost two weeks, I find that I have something to write about again.

There are a couple of seemingly-unrelated things going on in my life right now that coalesced this morning into a more-or-less coherent understanding of why Body for Life has become so important to me. First of all, the 2005 Tour de France started on Saturday. It's an event that I grow more fascinated with every year, a multi-colored, multi-ethnic display of savagery and chivalry that, to me, is a showcase for the human spirit and all it's successes and failures.

At the same time, I'm reading several books in the series by Spider Robinson that began with Callahan's Crosstime saloon. The series is basically revolves around the question of what happens when you put ordinary people in the most unusual of circumstances. It basically posits the answer that in human nature, there is an innate tendency to rise to (or above) any occasion, no matter how extreme.

Also, last night, a member of the theater company that I work the closest with, the O'Fallon Repertory Theater, won a 2005 Arts for Life Best Performance Award in the category of Featured Dancer. His name is Ryan McGowan, dancer extraordinaire and member of the clan McGowan, and a finer bunch of people you will never meet. This award was something of a breakthrough for our little group, since it's our first win (although there have been a number of nominations, including two for my very-talented friend, Tanya Burns). Let me explain. Arts for Life presents it's best performance awards for outstanding performances in local community musical theater. In this local community, many of the other theater groups have larger budgets, better facilities, and access to a larger range of resources than our group. So, for us to get nominated by this organization and even win is a huge accomplishment. It's sort of in the same class as David slaying Goliath.

All these things have me thinking about human potential. In the movie The Natural, one of the main characters says, "I believe we have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live after we've learned." I think in some ways I've finally reached that second life. I'm still learning many things and I realize I have a lot to learn still, but I feel like I'm finally ready to embark on the business of living.

A friend of mine, who has been a distance runner like myself, told me that the hardest transition is going from training for the next race to training for life. To put it another way, it's the difference between attaining a level of fitness to reach a certain goal and having the level of fitness be the goal. This particular friend, who's a little older than I am, said a lot his training buddies are shooting for things like being able to walk a daughter down the aisle in ten years or being able to play with the grandkids in fifteen or twenty. Sure, neither of these things apply to me, but I get the idea and I'm beginning to understand it in my own life.

I look at myself right now and I see an all-around level of fitness that I never had before, ever. I have more to accomplish in this area, but I'm closer to getting there than I've ever been. And this gives me a template, a starting point, for accomplishing goals in other areas of my life.

The coming Challenge is going to be just that, a challenge. I'm in the middle of a play which is only going to get busier, and I have several other demands on my time right now. But I'll work it out. I know I will.

We don't have all the final pictures back from our final photo shoot. Even so, I will attempt to get the web site updated later this week. More soon....