My reward for embracing change........................

I have been reading this book about loving kindness, and was reading this morning about the notion that nothing stays the same and we can choose to embrace change or fight against it, but it will happen either way. I was also reading about how things come into our life and then go out again, and as with change it is up to us to choose to fight or embrace this notion, knowing that our response is not going to effect the flow of things. Then I got ready for a run.

My Ipod is MIA it seems. The last time I had it was when I went on a run. The following day my youngest and I took the dogs for a walk and she borrowed my fanny pack (with the Ipod in it) to hold the poop bags. Still a work in progress, I started my run by backtracking the route we had gone with the dogs on the chance that I would find the Ipod. No luck in that, and with no music to listen to while running, I spent the first part of my run embracing the fact that my Ipod was no longer in my life. I wished it well, and hoped that it would find the perfect home. I would much rather someone pick it up and be enjoying it rather than have it be cold and alone in some ditch. Then I imagined for a while that poem that goes, "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you it is yours. If it doesn't, it never was." Farewell dear Ipod, thanks for all the good times. Can't wait to see what replaces you in the future.

Then those thoughts got boring so I changed my thoughts to thinking about change. Because I had wanted to look for the Ipod, I was taking a different route than originally planned. This got me to thinking that I could, at any moment, alter the route that I was currently on. I could change it up and then change it up again if I wanted to. I played with this notion for a mile or so and then decided that I would do just that. I turned and went another way. I felt so liberated, so powerful for some strange reason. About twenty minutes later I was about a half mile from home and about thirty yards ahead of me another runner came out of a subdivision and headed off in front of me. He was not traveling that fast so I decided to use him to make myself go faster and try to catch him. As I approached and then came up even with him, I was on the sidewalk and he was on the left-hand side of the road (the side one is suppose to be on when running on the road btw), and he started to cross over as I was thanking him for being there to race against. He told me that he was crossing so he could join me and I could make HIM run a little faster. NO ONE has ever told me that I made them go faster before. I was on top of the world. No matter that he was a 64 y/o, the guy has been running thirty years to my two. I can be proud if I want to be. We ended up pacing each other until we came to my street and I got a nice little speed work-out that I would have lost out on had I continued down the original route I was first running.

How great if we could always embrace the idea of change with an open heart and like it was going to be the most exciting adventure ever. Heck, maybe you already do. Maybe, just maybe, I might one day learn this art. Won't that be a change?