Day 285: Rewards...

Back in the day when I ran marathons and competed in triathlons one of my most favorite things to do after a race was to head down to Main St. in Huntington Beach and have dinner at the Huntington Beach Beer Company.   They served up the best buffalo chicken pizza and they brewed up this incredible beer, Crowley's Cream Ale, the likes I've never experienced since.  It was my reward for months of training and a day's worth of agonizing, self-inflicted punishment.  Now I frequented that brewery more times than I can count but something about those post race meals stood out more than any other time. 

One of my favorite quotes is "You're never more alive than when you're almost dead". I'm sure that's true, literally, although I've never experienced something quite that extreme.  But I think "death" can be defined in a number of ways.  Think of a time when you were emotionally or physically beaten.  Perhaps a bad break up, trouble at work, or those last two miles of a marathon.  At those moments there are no other distractions that occupy your attention.  You are totally focused on the event at hand.  The pain is very real and in many cases seemingly unsurvivable.  You're feeling every fiber of your existence.  It's as if every part of you is buzzing with electricity and every nerve ending is on fire.  At that very moment you are stripping away the facade of your life, exposing who you really are and forcing yourself to draw on that inner strength you never thought you had.   

Eventually the pain stops. You've survive the bad break up or failed marriage.  You've move forward in your career, maybe on a new path.  You've crossed that finish line.   You can look back with some gratification that you survived it.  It didn't beat you.  Although you may feel wiped out, you've actually emerged on the other side stronger, wiser and more grounded than when you first began the struggle.  From that moment on life takes on a new perspective.  Your senses are more finely tuned and many of the things you thought were so important in your life now have no real meaning.  This new awareness wouldn't have been possible if you hadn't first taken that arduous journey. 

You can't fully enjoy the rewards in life if you never followed a path to get there.  It's a magnificent view from the top of a Colorado 14er, but there's huge difference in the gratification and depth of that experience between those that drove to the summit (as you can on Mt. Evans and Pikes Peak) and those that hiked to the top.  Being dropped off at the finish line provides you no sense of accomplishment.  The reward isn't at the finish line, the top of a mountain or at the graduation ceremony.  The reward is earned every grueling step it took to get there.