After my return from the Ironman trip as a volunteer, I immersed myself back into the pool for a gentle swim. With each stroke I allowed myself to surrender to the water and with each breath followed the flow of my thoughts and the memories that surfaced. Collapsing… integrating….
When I witnessed the effort of the athletes, I felt their pain and pleasure from start to finish. As an empath I felt their struggle, their exhaustion, their jubilation, their fears, their doubts. I saw all these as reflections within me at a visceral level. I wondered why, as I continued to mull over these emotional experiences.
We each connect to another human through many pathways but suffering is one of the hard core ones. When we see the journey of another whether it is a divinity or a simple child struggling to accomplish a simple task we connect back to our own journey of suffering, loss, victory and success. The journey has a beginning and an end but it is the in between that we explore the deepest at every level of our cells and being. This is a hard wired circuit in our human psyche that prevails our consciousness. We witness this when we see heart wrenching movies or are the presence of suffering in person.
That is what threads humans together. Our journey to love through suffering. No one does not suffer. We are all human. It is a good lesson for me to remember that as I embark on my own path of this quest, to uncover my own mindsets, fears, doubts, and at times feel that I have failed, lost, feel hopeless or that my mission is over prematurely. It is here that I am invited to explore what comes up, integrate and then traverse beyond the fears.
I choose to take this path for I am unclear how it will shape me but I know that it will. I am not doing this for a brand logo, but to explore that in the course of the distance of 140.6 miles who I meet, what I do, how I react to adversity, and break the limits of my mind, body and heart and allow the expansiveness of spirit to roam free.
I am eternally grateful for my friends who have helped me on this quest, not just for their support but for their advice, guidances but most of all for their friendship and for my wifey, who seems to already know my suffering ahead and prepares me for it intuitively in all matters.
“The journey of 140.6 miles begins with the decision to Tri.”
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I love you
