Terrain

In the morning hours, a heavy rain blew in from the Gulf of Bothnia. With my first race since Marrakech scheduled for 6 pm tonight, I fear that the trails will be really slippery by the time I get out in the forest. Despite that and a slight cold coming on, the rain on the windows has a strong meditative effect. For some reason, listening to the rain like this tends to take me back to the East Coast, to New Jersey, to calm days that probably never were.

I guess the word I am looking for is “unconstrained”. Like “health”, it is one of those concepts that only becomes meaningful when you know its opposite. But that is what I was back then. Now, every moment is somehow on borrowed time, as a parent you do not decide when you get to sleep or when you will be interrupted in your thoughts. Still, I am immensely grateful that my life is no longer just about autonomy, that I have obligations that are real, and that I can pass on some of the love that I received myself as a child. But, as everything else, it is also about relative balances. So, when asked “what I want to do when I grow up”, I guess the answer is to “breath”, to take some time away from it all. Given my allergy to everything even remotely esoteric, I will not use the concept of “mindfulness” here but I guess that captures some of it. Funny enough, I somehow know that if or when the time comes, I will be just as unable to appreciate it as I was a decade ago in New Jersey...