Well, welcome to Soul Sips on Sunday!
Today, I’m out at a Lake in Northern Ontario, and it is quite something living in cottage life. You know, it’s the funniest thing because you think that, oh my gosh, all I want to do is go up to a cottage and just relax and chill, and it is gorgeous, as you can see.
It’s early in the morning, but my goodness it takes a practice to just get into that mode to, you know, it’s always something to be sleeping in a different bed, but to listen to the silence and to not have some of the hummings and the amenities that you’re used to. And one of them might be a shower for myself but I thought you know this is what these videos are about, or what I would like to step into which is like keeping it just really real.
So, I thought today I would bring up a portion of a conversation, out of all due respect, out of my son but yesterday we had a great conversation and it turned into a very interesting metaphor that I’d like to share with you. So, my son and I were in a conversation about compassion, and I was trying to explain to him what compassion was versus feeling sorry for somebody else. And you know, and he was basically saying, I’m done with feeling sorry for people because people just need to get up and get going, and in you know people are just looking for, he didn’t use the word pity but it, it was, or attention, and he said you know it like I’ve had really hard things happen to me, and, and I’ve chosen to get up you just need to get up and get going.
And I said yeah, yeah, I get that because that’s who I was as well, and that’s how I looked at people. I was just like put your big girl pants on and giddy up and get going, I know life is hard, but you gotta get going and, and, then I said however, compassion is something that is a place where you don’t judge people. It’s where you step back and you just go, alright you’re living something different than I am, I’m gonna sit back and I’m going to listen to you. I’m going to give you this time to tell me what is going on, and I’m not going to try to fix you.
And it couldn’t quite get his head around it because then he went on to tell me, he said, “You know what mom, life is like a marathon, and it’s like that feeling when you’re at 38 kilometers and you’re just done, you’re spent, and you’re out of water. You have no water, you’re totally exhausted and you just want to stop. You just don’t wanna go to the finish line even though you know it’s just four kilometers away, you just don’t have it in you.” And he says, “You know what you do? You lick the sweat off your lips and you keep going!”
And I laughed. I laughed and laughed, and this is how his athletic mind thinks, and quite frankly that’s how I used to think too. It was just keep going. And so, which made me kind of think a little bit further. And I didn’t feel like I really, I didn’t have compassion, I thought I understood people, and I thought I could give people space, and, and, and that was really my job, and I loved listening to people, but I think underneath, I always just kind of thought, okay, yeah, let’s go, giddy up, get going because that’s how I pushed myself through even though whatever shit was going on in my life. I just felt that I had control over myself to get myself up, and, and, I always just kind of saw that horizon just like this particular son of mine.
Anyways it brought me to a larger analogy because I used to talk about being on the treadmill of life, and that treadmill of life was just, you know it, it’s just that constant, and it’s so hard to get off. It’s like one thing after another and the treadmill just keeps moving and you gotta keep moving your feet. You pick up and you carry, and you go, and you, you just keep going, and keep going, keep going. I used to say this about when my kids were little, it was like how much sitting time did I get. It was just like, Oh my God, I get to sit, and then as time went on, I started literally booking sitting time in which was five thirty in the morning. I would get up before everybody woke and, and, have some sitting time.
But when you talk about that marathon, it was this this route that I kept doing, and, and, I hope that you can relate to this as well. You just get on and you start training, you start eating, you start absorbing yourself into this lane and that lane is very, what I call linear. It’s about getting it done, getting it done, and you just keep moving forward, right, left, right, left, eat, drink, sleep it, until something stops you. Right?
And you hit that 38 kilometres, and you add water, and again, we spoke about this, what are the options? And I said, can you sit? Can you rest? I said to my son, can you rest? And he said, “yeah you can rest the rest but you gotta get back up.” And I said, okay, and I thought yeah, I’ve rested, I’ve gone on vacations, I’ve taken breaks, I read books, and then I get back up, and I get going in and hit that finish line, and then I do it all over again. I do it a little bit differently this time, and then I go again, and I hit 38, and I’m crashing again. This time I reached to other people and other people hand the water, and I’m like, I’m rejuvenated, I’m ready to go. Well I finished that finish line and I’ve got a stomach ache, I’ve got a stomach ache that goes on for months because of that water that I drank. That water that was coming from somebody I thought I trusted, somebody, actually it’s more like somebody who I felt was, was giving me the water in my best interest, to help me, without judgment. And I don’t know if that actually happened, so then I had to peel that layer away and analyze that, and I start that marathon again.
And every time I started that marathon, I’d hit 38 kilometres and crash. And I’d find different ways to band aid myself up to get me to the finish line. But it was when I was thinking about this analogy that I was realizing being a runner myself, those of you who are runners or who have been around runners, if you’ve been around a runner, I can speak and I will speak to myself, we are self consumed, we’re extremely egotistical. We are focused on our next race. We’re focused on our next run, we’re focused on our sleep before our next big long run on the weekend, we’re thinking about our food, we’re thinking about our drink. We’re actually waving to people on the street as they honk to us, we actually are listening to people go, Oh my God I can’t believe your discipline, I can’t believe how you can run that far, how do you do it? And we revel in it.
And I put this to the marathon of my life, and that marathon that I kept getting on at the celebration for how do you do it Andrea? How do you do it? you got 4 kids, you’re running a business, and look at you, you just look as, I had a girlfriend reference me as perfect, and I almost went, Oh my God I am so far from perfect, because I was crumbling, crumbling inside, and crashing continually, but nobody saw it. At 38 kilometres, I would do whatever I had to do because I knew that mind set, that mind set that’s in my son, of just get up, just get up.
Now here’s the thing I still believe that, I still believe that we have to get up. However, that treadmill of life, or that marathon, that’s where I think things changed, and that’s where things changed for me. And so, this analogy that steps into that last time that I ran that marathon, I hit 38 K and I needed to be hit by a Mac truck, and that Mac truck came over and it knocked me over so hard, and it rolled me into that ditch. And I hung out in that ditch for quite some time. I was all muddy and I was bruised, and I was sore, and I was depressed, I was like covered in mud. Until one day, I said I can’t hang out here, and my kids are out there. What are they doing? Where are they?
So, I got out of that mud that ditch, I climbed out by myself, nobody was around, I did it myself. And this is also where I think the healing process is, that it’s okay to be in the mud and it’s okay to be down, and depressed inside, and wherever we’re at, I think it’s a very important part of our process. But getting out of that ditch, wanting somebody to carry you out, wanting someone to reach in and pull you out, and, and clean you off, it’s again, I think a band aid. It feels good. Maybe we want somebody to just come and save us.
I remember feeling that many times for a long time. I had a girlfriend who I just wanted her to swoop me up and just take care of me, and she just kept saying, no Andrea you need to go put your big girl pants on and take care of it, take care of yourself and be kind to yourself. And I think that’s also where we forget right? We’re allowed to crash, we’re allowed to hang out in that ditch, we’re allowed to be sad, we’re allowed to be depressed, we’re allowed to feel shitty and we’re allowed to just be sad at what was, or maybe what we thought, or we were told that life was going to be.
But you know, life goes on. So, you get out of that ditch and here is then what happened, I felt with me anyways, I got out of that ditch and I cleaned myself up. And I went back out into the world, I didn’t go back into that marathon but I went back out into that world, and I looked the same, and so people thought this was the same. But it changed, inside me changed, inside me changed on how I wanted to speak, how I wanted to feel, how I wanted to give space to myself, to people, to my children, what I wanted relationships to look like. And as a result of that people didn’t like that, they didn’t like that change, they wanted me to stay the way I was because I was serving them. I was, I was being what they needed me to be, and I think this is what happens when we hang out that ditch, and we choose to get off that marathon, and when we choose to shift out of that world of running and self consumption. And the egotistical ways of worrying about what everybody else is going to say to feel in response to what I need to do for myself.
So I thought this was really, really fantastic that my son is on the cusp, he doesn’t quite understand compassion yet. I think he is a compassionate person but that’s life, that’s the journey, that’s the experience, that’s the growth, that’s the wisdom. I look back at those days, running those marathons, and there was a while that I looked back at them with a bit of regret. Why didn’t I get off that marathon faster? You know, why don’t I take myself off? Why didn’t have the strength to get off and I don’t know, I don’t know. But what I don’t do anymore is I don’t guilt myself. I don’t hang out there. I don’t hang out there in guilt. I sometimes hang out with sadness. As I explained it to my son, I said I had to break. I had to break and part of breaking was letting go of a lot of things, and you guys, you kids, that was really hard for you guys to see are because I directed you on everything. We were on that marathon together and everything was very linear, and I made you go in one direction, and then to that direction and then in this direction, and there was a lot of pressure all over for you guys and for me. I put it on myself and put it on you. And then it was hard when I broke.
But now I go for runs, I love to go for runs around but I only go for two a week. I always make sure that I rest in between. I don’t time myself, if I need to walk, I walk. I don’t get all over myself and after every run, I sit on my steps, hot and sweaty. I feel alive. I feel extremely grateful that my legs worked, that I had the will and the desire to run and see and feel.
There’s nothing wrong with running, running for goals and distances and pushing yourself. But where I’m at with my running now is also a parallel to where I’m at with my life, and it is stepping away from what I thought I had to do. What I thought I needed to do to get to that finish line. And it was ruled by many things that were not within myself. I thought I was supposed to do and be.
So getting tossed in that ditch by the Mack truck was probably my deepest and darkest moment in my life, but as explained to my son, it was also an unbelievable moment in my life because my level of compassion now is at a space I never could have got too if I hadn’t hung out in that ditch. I see people. I feel people. I want to give them space. I want to share my story, so they can say, someone else like me, and I do believe that is the key to us evolving as humans is our compassion without judgment. Let people be.
My most favorite saying right now, well I’ve got a few, I always have a few. One of mine, is, “You do you, and I’ll do me.” You don’t need to judge me; I have no space or place to judge you. You get to do your thing. And I get to sit back and say, “you go girl” or I can sit back and just go, alright then, you do your thing, I’m going to go do my thing. And I wish you the best. Who am I to say anything about you and who are you to say anything about me? Let’s just do you, and I’ll do me. It’s kind of a cool way to be. Run if you want, walk if you want, sit if you want, rest if you want. Hang out at the cottage. Do whatever you want. Do whatever is inside of you, what your voice is saying you need to do to be you!
Cheers!