Ever since Chris started graduate school at Yale, I’ve had this sticker on the back of my car. It’s a simple sticker that says, “Yale University.” At first, it was a badge of honor because I thought it was so cool to actually know someone who went to Yale. After the novelty of the school wore off, I kept it on my car because I was so proud of Chris for what he had accomplished. When he graduated and started working in New York, we kept our connection to Yale through my job there, and that sticker was no longer a symbol of Chris, but of my own ties to Yale. When we moved to Florida, I debated about taking the sticker off, but decided to leave it on for nostalgic reasons. Every time I backed my car up, I’d see that sticker in my rearview mirror and I would remember that wonderfully happy time in our lives.
I took the sticker off this weekend.
Looking in that rearview mirror every day kept me in the past. Every time I looked at that sticker, it was because I was backing up. Sometimes it was backing up my car, and sometimes it was backing up emotionally. I’d look at that sticker and think about all the things I didn’t have in my life anymore. The people who we came to love at Yale, the house that became our first home, the jobs that started out our career paths, the seasons that gave us so much happiness…all of it. Every time I saw that sticker in my rearview mirror as I backed up, I’d mentally and emotionally back up a little bit, too.
This week, I was backing my car out of my parking spot at school after a particularly rewarding day of teaching that made me both proud and happy to be a teacher. I glanced at the sticker and thought to myself, “Oh! That’s still on there?” I couldn’t remember the last time I had noticed it. Probably not for months. “I should probably take that off,” I thought.
Just like that. I should just take it off.
In the past year, we have been establishing ourselves where we wanted to be in Orlando. We’ve built a life that not only satisfies me the way that our life in Connecticut had, but goes beyond that and makes me feel complete and whole. I can’t imagine my life being anywhere but here. I know where my kids are going to go to school in a couple years. I wake up every morning and drive to a job that fulfills me in ways I didn’t even know needed fulfilling. I come home to a family that is funny and happy and energetic and exhausting and constantly keeping me on my toes. I lay down at night beside the one person in the whole entire world that could give me this life. I can honestly say that I have never been this happy in my life.
You should see my house right now. It is a disaster zone. (I say that like that’s a change from the normal, every day state of my house…) But you know what I did today? I went on a glass bottom boat tour with my mom, my best friend, my grandma, and my two kids. We came home to the hustle of bath times and bedtimes and Sunday evening chores to get ready for the week. And as I sit here now, my house is finally quiet and the rush of the day is calm and if I had to give one word to my day after all that chaos it would be “happiness.” Just pure happiness. Happiness that I got to spend the day with three generations of women, all who have inspired me in ways I don’t even think they know. Happiness even though the kids were tired and grumpy when we got home and fought bedtime hard core. Happiness even though I got absolutely nothing done that I needed to for this upcoming week. Happiness even when I’m exhausted and feel like I need another weekend to recover from this weekend. It is all just happiness to me.
Running has been an unexpected joy in my life, but I think it is really the sign of something much deeper happening to me right now. With every step I run, with each early morning I rise, with each mile I clock, I am doing something that brings me happiness. For a long time, happiness was situational for me. I was happy when things were happy around me. But something in the past four or five months has shown me how to live in a state of happiness, even during times that may not necessarily be happy. On work days when I feel ineffective in the classroom, I still feel happy in my career. On days when dinner is late to the table and kids are crying and dogs are barking and Chris texts to say he hasn’t even left the office yet, I still feel happy. I feel other things that sometimes dull that happiness – frustration or exhaustion or anger – but at the end of each day, there is always happiness.
Deep, deep down in my soul there is happiness now.
Turns out, I don’t need to be constantly reminded about specific times in my life that have made me happy. I don’t need a sticker in my rearview mirror to remind me of happy days. That happiness is inside me. It goes with me. It’s there on good days and on bad days and every day in between. And when it is that prevalent in my life, when I don’t need reminders or moments that show me how happy I am, when it just comes that naturally from inside, then it’s time to take down that sticker.
15Apr
I’m reading this book called “Mile Markers,” by Lance Armstrong’s ex-wife, Kristin Armstrong. She is a runner who has a blog on the Runner’s World website and who has written several books about life through the eyes of a runner. This particular book is about the “26.2 reasons that women run.” Sarah gave it to me to read. I was a little skeptical at first because while I am continuing to run five to six days out of the week, I still wouldn’t call myself a runner and so I felt a little bit like an outsider reading a “runner’s” book. But, as Sarah promised, it isn’t a runner’s book at all. It is more about women and friendship and life, and, I have to say, it is so uplifting to read. Not only does it make me proud of all the running I’ve been doing, but, more importantly, it makes me more aware of the kind of person I want to be.
Actually, running in general has done this for me. In the past few months that I have been getting up early and running, I’ve seen real differences in my life in areas other than my health and waistline. The biggest change I have seen in myself is that I am simplifying my choices. It started as a simple question I’d ask myself at 5:00am when I found myself wide awake in my bed, trying to decide if I was going to get up and go run. I am the Queen of Excuses. I’m pretty sure I’ve held that title since I was little. I can come up with an excuse for anything. But at 5:00am, it’s hard to come up with creative excuses. It really just boiled down to one statement: I could go running, or not. It was as simple as that. I could choose to get up or not. There was no excuse, no reason, no explanation that mattered. I could do it or not.
And so, I’d sigh and grumbled, “Fine!” to myself and I’d get up out of bed and go for a run. Which I never regretted.
Gradually, I stared applying that simple choice to all kinds of things. When presented with cupcakes in the teachers lounge, it became, “I can eat that cupcake or not.” And I walked away without those empty calories.
After flopping into bed one night without taking off my make up and washing my face, it became, “I can wash my face or not.” And I’d get up, wash my face, and sleep better.
When faced with sending a scary email that I had been avoiding for a couple days, it became, “I can send that email or not.” And I cranked out that email in three minutes and it was over.
When I got home from work and school and the kids were crying and I could either put on a movie to entertain them or I could get us all up and moving, it became, “I can either go for a walk or not.” And I loaded the kids up in the wagon and we got out for a while, all feeling better for doing something active rather than sitting on the couch.
When deciding if I was going to go to a meeting after work one day on the other side of town even though I didn’t feel too good, it became, “I can either go or not.” And I went and felt really great for being involved.
When extended an invitation to something that I might normally have not attended, it became, “I can either go or not.” And I ended up going and having a really great time.
When thinking about my Grandma one night this week in the middle of the mad dinner dash at my house, it became, “I can either call her or not.” And I called her, had a sweet conversation, and realized no one was going to die if dinner was a few minutes late.
When standing on one side of a hanging bridge or next to a tiny airplane in Costa Rica, it became, “I can either do this or not.” And I walked across that bridge or up into that airplane and (though I thought I was going to die both times…) I never looked back.
When I felt myself getting really mad at Chris over something this week, it became, “I can pick a fight about that or not.” And I decided to call my sister instead, blow off some steam, and Chris and I ended up having a civil conversation about it later instead of a fight right then.
I know that not all things in life are black and white, yes or no. But after a month or so of boiling things down to a yes or no decision, I haven’t found too many things that can’t be applied to my decision-making statement. I use it to make 95% of the decisions I make these days, and I find that not only am I making better choices, but I am doing a lot more things than I normally would do. I’m more active and more proactive. I complain less and feel guilty less because I know that I’ve made every decision deliberately and intentionally. I am more content and satisfied, even on days when things are crazy busy and hectic. It certainly doesn’t eliminate all my problems or stresses, but it does make me feel more in control of the things I do have a choice in.
I’m finding that life without excuses feels a lot better than a life built on excuses.
08Mar
I get asked a lot about the trip to Costa Rica that Chris and I are taking at the end of March. We were recipients of the “Gift of Happiness,” which is an eight-day stay in Costa Rica at beautiful hotels, doing adventurous activities, in exotic locations. Sounds pretty darn happy to me.
But whenever people would ask me about it, I sort of avoided the topic. There were two reasons. First, there was this tiiiiiiiny little problem with my passport. Like, the fact that I didn’t have one. Years ago, when I was in my teens, I had a passport, but who the heck knows where it is now. When I needed one for my honeymoon, it was during the time when you could still use a certified birth certificate to fly with, so that’s how I got out of the country then. But now, I needed a real passport and mine was no where to be found. I decided not to tell our lovely travel agent this minor detail in the planning (sorry, if you’re reading right now!!!). I figured I’d apply for a new passport, on the hunch that since I now needed an adult passport, it technically WAS the first time I was applying. But as the plans were formed for our trip and as plane tickets and hotel reservations arrived, I kept this horrible pit in my stomach. What if they sent the passport application back to me and said it would be a more complicated process since I had lost my first? I wouldn’t have time for that before our trip! I was up all night long some nights, worrying about my passport.
But then… IT CAME!!!!!!
I was so excited I could hardly speak! Now I was legal and ready to roll! But even with that huge weight off my chest, I still found it hard to get really excited. And, actually, I feel that way about a lot of things these days.
In the past few years, I’ve become a lot more hesitant about celebrating things too far into the future. We made a lot of plans for the past two years – a move across country, a new life for our family, great jobs, and an easy transition. And a lot of stuff disappointed me and, at time, downright hurt me, when I expected one thing and another thing happened instead. I guess that happens to you as you get older. In fact, it probably happens to people a lot younger than me, but I just hadn’t experienced it yet. For the most part, whatever I wanted to happen in my life, had happened. I’d worked really hard to accomplish goals and follow my plans, and so I just got used to things always working out for me. So, when I went through those few years where everything sucked, it was a really big wake up call for me that sometimes in life, things just don’t go like you want them to. I’m glad I learned that lesson, but learning it did cause me to shy away a bit from celebrating things a bit too early.
The downside to that hard life lesson is that you can sometimes lose your optimism. I remember when we finally found our house and were under contract to buy, everyone around me was so excited and wanted me to be excited, too. But I had just come off the heels of a two year period where everything seemed to fall apart at the last minute, and I wasn’t too eager to get all excited. I basically waited for the other shoe to drop through the whole buying process. And that’s pretty normal, I guess. Buying a house is tense and stressful. But even after we got into the house, I never really had a big celebration moment. It was always just a “I’m going to get by until something bad happens,” kind of feeling. I think that’s why I’ve been so slow on the renovations to our house. I haven’t really sat around dreaming of paint samples and fabric swatches or anything. And I think that’s all because I’ve lost a bit of my excitement about major events in life because I got burned so bad during that two year period of time.
I worried for a while that it was depression that kept me from being excited about things. Whenever something major would happen and I wouldn’t be as excited as I used to get, I’d secretly stop and wonder if life was always going to be this way. Would I always expect bad things to happen now? Would I ever be completely, totally happy again? And if I wasn’t, would it be because I’d grown wiser with age, or would it be because I had pieces of depression still in my mind, planted like tiny emotional landmines that always went off whenever happy things happened to me? But I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately, and I don’t think it is remnants of depression. I think that as we get older, we learn the hard lesson that life sometimes doesn’t go as planned. The upside to all of that is that I’m also learning that it’s often in the unplanned situations that you find real happiness. Deeper happiness.
And so, I think it’s strangely (and divinely, I must say) ironic that Chris and I are getting ready for our “Gift of Happiness” trip. Because if I’ve learned anything about happiness, it’s that it really is a gift that is given out of experiences and moments created by us, for us, and with us by the people we really love in our lives.
We leave in three weeks, and for the first time since we heard we were going, I got excited this morning. Really, truly excited. Giddy even. I was riding in my car on the way to work and a song came on the radio. It was about a couple packing their bags and getting away from it all for a while. And I thought about sitting on the beach with Chris, laughing with him, spending entire days with him without having to share our attention between kids or dogs or jobs or family. An entire week of having plans, but also of having the luxury of knowing that the absolute worst that could happen is our plans would fall through and we’d end up sitting on a beach all day. And I thought to myself, “You know, who couldn’t use a little gift of happiness every now and then?”
Last weekend, my BFF, Sarah, made me run another 5k with her. Chris said that since I have now run two 5k’s, I am officially a runner. But I don’t think it counts if the ONLY time you run is when your friend drags you through a 5k…
(Do you like our socks???)
I put pictures on Facebook and Twitter and I had so many people congratulating me on being so “athletic.”
I feel like I should clarify.
I am about as athletic as a bag of Doritos. I want to work out. I want to be healthy. But I just don’t have time! And, I know, I know. You make time for what is important. But I have made time for my job, my kids, my husband, this blog, my home life, my church life, and, occasionally, a good book. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for any other priorities right now. So, working out falls to the wayside.
Well, not the wayside exactly. I try to let it fall to the wayside, but freaking Sarah keeps trying to force me into healthy living. At least every other day, Sarah calls to ask me to go do something healthy – walk around the neighborhood (yes, we grew up together, teach together, and we now live in the same neighborhood), go for a jog, explore a nature park, take a yoga class. Every other day, Sarah calls or texts me with some activity for us to try. Which means every other day, I have to come up with an excuse. It’s becoming tiresome.
LET’S STOP THE CHARADE, SARAH!
But, she won’t stop. She is tenacious and unforgiving. It’s kind of like I’ve stepped in chewing gum and it won’t come off my shoe. I keep telling her I liked her better when all we did was drink and shop, but she will have none of my complaints. She’s tough, that Sarah.
So, last weekend, we ran a 5k. Well, “ran” is really ambiguous. Bless her athletic, vegan, little heart. She stuck by me the entire time and pretended to be as winded as I was. I started out alright. For the first mile(ish), I ran pretty good. I was passing people, tossing my hair, and picturing myself looking somewhat similar to those paparazzi pictures of Carrie Underwood when she works out. Then, I got a cramp in my side just as we came up on the first mile marker.
Now, I would like to pause here and appreciate the fact that I even made it a MILE. The last time I ran was in December at a 5k in Sea World. A mile without dying was a miracle to me.
With that cramp, I told Sarah I thought we had to stop and walk a bit.
“Oh, good,” Sarah said politely. “I’m tired, too.”
Now that was just a blatant lie. Sarah runs all the time and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t sweat. Like, ever. So the fact that she pretended to need a break for my sake was nice of her. We slowed to a quick walk pace for about 10 minutes.
“Okay,” I said. “I think I’m ready.”
We started running again for about 5 minutes and then I was POSITIVE I was going to either:
a) throw up
b) pass out
c) die
We were running on a cobblestone road and I really think that it was looking down at those cobblestones that made me suddenly get sick to my stomach. Well, those and the fact that in the past two months I hadn’t run further than to my car in the Target parking lot when it was raining. I told Sarah we had to stop.
“Oh, good,” Sarah chirped happily. “I’m winded.”
But she didn’t look winded. She looked windblown in that sitting-beside-a-breezy-beach-drinking-a-margarita way. But she stopped and walked with me anyway.
And we never ran again.
I walked the last almost two miles and I thought I was going to either:
a) throw up
b) pass out
c) kill someone…preferably Sarah
In the last fourth of a mile, the cameras and crowds started lining the street and yelling to encourage us. I wanted to yell back at them to shut the hell up and let me die in peace, but Sarah insisted that we actually RUN across the finish line. When I started running again, I couldn’t feel my legs. At all. I figured that meant either:
a) I was about to throw up
b) I was about to pass out
c) my legs had actually fallen off sometime during the second mile and I hadn’t even noticed
But, I did it. Dammit. I ran my short, fat legs across that finish line and I even resisted the urge to hit the runners who had already finished the race and looked all fresh-faced as they cheered for us and congratulated us. So, there’s a win. Nobody got punched.
The moral of this pathetic story? Find friends who are lazier than you and who want you to become lazier than them, instead of friends who want you to be healthy and live a long, full life. Those kinds of friends are overrated. So is running.
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