EVER SINCE THE 7-MILE WALK

…it seems like everyday is met with a demand for tenacity. It’s as if the world possesses opportunity but won’t relent until you contend for it. You ever notice how difficult a task becomes when you finally decide to do it? Flashback to last week. My blog “Why the 7 Mile Walk” was about how I needed a phone charger while in Maui and ended up walking seven miles to find one only to find that I already had one with me. There were plenty of insights that readers offered at my request as to why I had to do such a strenuous act of redundancy. One of the insights that stuck was from a family member who sent me a Facebook message to the effect that I did all that walkin’ for others, not for myself. She said,

“it seemed like why did u have to do it, well u had to do it to help someone like me understand u truly have to work hard an the road isn’t easy but will get u the result.”

I love social network English. What she said spoke so clearly to me though. Seems like when I made up my mind to apply to a doctoral program, all hell shifted it’s attention to me. When I finally bought a laptop, when I finally decided to go back to playing basketball, when I resolved to confront people, strange impediments revealed themselves. Is this happenstance? Doubt it. But regardless, you’ll have to toughen up. Perhaps the difference between thinking about advancing and actually doing the detail that will advance you is immeasurably vast. There’s a fair amount of naivete involved with mulling over a life change because thoughts cost you nothing. It’s when time and energy begin being spent that we question the value of the pursuit because it’s harder than anticipated. But like my little cousin told me, the long walk is bigger than you to begin with. The limitation of our thinking is that we associate the dreams we chase with our own happiness when really that happiness should be connected to the fact that others are going to find hope in your resilience and relentlessness.