Eight per Second

I have heard it said that the hurdles are a metaphor for life. You run towards an obstacle at full force and then at the last minute, you jump over it. The best hurdler won’t hesitate. Their stride is the same as their jump. The hurdle isn’t even there. Yet, to get over the hurdle creates so much fear and it clenches at your heart, but you’ve just got to face it.

Perhaps, that’s true for some people.

But I’m a distance runner.

You can’t give it your all because there is more left to come and then it is just so silent. Then the silence consumes you perhaps for a minute: perhaps for infinity. When you poke your head out of the shell, you first hear your breathing - it’s ragged but you’ve got to fight to keep it steady. You have to keep track of each lap - one, two, three. Did you make a mistake?

Too late to know now.

You’ve got to keep going, despite how much it hurts. Everything becomes loud. How easy would it be to just step off the track and throw in the towel! But you don’t, you find some way to keep going. Along the way, you are lapped but then, you lap someone else and the race still goes on and you can barely figure out the start and end of the runners on the black top.

Yet, you’re still alone.

Oh, how you keep fighting.

Your obstacle is the body that is allowing you to make any progress what-so-ever.

Then it’s over, before you know it.

Is this the cynical take on life? I don’t think so. I imagine myself as more of a realist. There are so many metaphors to life and it’s hard to decipher through each one. It feels like you’re wading in mud but one that refreshed my senses was the saying, “5cm per second; the rate at which cherry blossoms fall.”

Cherry blossoms do not fall in a straight line. The flutter and sing back and forth such as a pendulum does. They hit the floor lightly but while in the air, they dance with other petals. Perhaps, that is truly how life is. We dance with random petals - people - and then as quick as we meet we loose each other.