Pursuit

Kids in Oyugis

If anyone were to actually read this blog, and why would they, they might see that since July a certain pattern is vaguely apparent. The first paragraph or two of each weekly entry are more or less developed and then I finish off the rest of the theme in haste without so much as a proofread. The misspelled words and bad grammar I can live with, but I feel bad that my idea is not developed the way I would have liked. Yeah, I could write less often and so have more time for each theme but a major incentive for writing the blog was to add another type of motivation to keep me running. Writing less could eventually lead to less running and since only a few people read this anyway the content in only a secondary concern.

I bring this up because there were some ideas that I didn't really get into last week when I wrote about running in 2009. One of these was the whole idea of creating goals and challenges and living a more meaningful, and indeed a more happy life. My thought, the one that I did not make very well and it occurs to me may fail just a miserably this week, is that all of us are actually more fulfilled and satisfied during periods of challenge. We can see examples of this all around us.

My brother Chris took a trip with some of his work mates on a "mission" of sorts to Oyugis, Kenya a few years ago. When he returned and told the story of the villagers lives and showed the pictures of the people there, I was shocked. Poor living conditions I expected. People with very few things and a dismal future, I was braced for. But what shocked me were the faces of the children (and children are what you see in Oyugis, very few people live long enough to get old there). Their faces were the brightest and most beautiful I had ever seen. Not sad and crying as I had expected, but smiling and full of... life. Bursting with the pleasure and simple happiness of the visitors and the serendipity of their picture being taken. The most genuine and luminous smiles you could ever imagine.

I can't help but compare this image to my own kids. By contrast, they have no want. They can eat to excess any time they choose. Our house is pretty nice and always within a degree of the ideal temperature. They will have all the educational opportunities that are offered with their almost certain academic scholarships(they had better) . Statistically they can expect to live for a good long time, and yet given all this they still can easily fall into a funk, complain about that which they do not have and all too easily, it seems to me, seem unhappy.

And when we take their picture they have to be reminded to smile.

Why the difference? It seems so backwards, and yet I can see other examples of this all around me. A little girl of the couple that mows the lawns and trims the bushes in my neighbors yards dances around with much more glee and playful abandon than the children who actually live in those houses. Their beat up old pickup truck sits in the center of our cul-de-sac in grating contrast to the SUV's which swing wide to avoid it. But they seem so happy.

During my firefighting career, my fire station family would slowly, surely and predictably slip in a routine induced sulk until some shared work tragedy pulled us together. Struggle and co-experienced hardship made us closer and in a strange way, which is difficult to explain to others, improved our collective mood. Again, not what you would expect.

Happiness doesn't come in a gift wrapped box and left for you on your door step. Instead it comes from the conflict and grind of everyday life; it's a product of the contest. This is an idea known by every schoolchild in my country, who learns that one of our earliest notions was to link the words pursuit and happiness in eternal wedlock. Pursuit comes first. An idea forgotten by most adults and one that must be relearned.

This is yet another reason that I run; setting contrived goals, establishing a self-proclaimed struggle in a world made far too easy for me. Setting a target of qualifying for Boston and working toward that end in 2009 was really a way of simply having fun and staying happy.

Anyway, I could on about this....but I'm out of time for this week and need to work on my next entry.