Work, Celebrate, Adjust, Repeat

uring my run I listened to “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall. In it he describes a Rarájipari: a Tarahumara running game played by two teams of four or more players. One member of each team takes a wooden baseball-sized ball and kicks the ball ahead. The members of that team then chase after the ball, pick it up then kick it again. This is usually done for several miles in the casual games. However, in the serious inter-village contests, held after all-night parties meaning all night runs.

The Tarahumara explain the essence of the game this way:

It is like the game of life: You never know how hard it will be. You’ll never know when the game will end, you can’t control it you can only adjust and no one gets thru it on their own.

Each step along life’s trail is different and we start each day not knowing the challenges we will face. Finding joy in the adjustments is one of the toughest and most enjoyable things I’ve ever done. As I reflect on adjustments made I realize that each adjustment provided an opportunity to see new perspectives, try new things and meet new people. Often I have and do push back on these adjustments as they are not a part of “the plan”. I’m beginning to realize the plan is being written as I go and I am free to edit as necessary. We take comfort in “the plan” until the plan no longer serves reality and holds us to what should be no longer reflecting what is. I wonder if it’s time to find comfort in what is with an eye toward what might be.

Finding joy where we are while looking toward the future can be hard and overwhelming. There’s so much to do and so many things to consider. Some moments, days, weeks, months or even years just aren’t fun. They’re hard, gritty, gnarly and difficult. You are imagining one of your moments like this right now as am I. Take a minute to celebrate the new ground broken and as important: the team you gathered to build the bridge from the plan to new reality. The Tarahumara have a great thought for that too:

Build friends in pain and you will never be alone.

We don’t know what challenges today will provide, nor the opportunities to call upon friends to walk through the abyss with us. There is joy in both for the small steps along the way are steps forward and so we keep moving.