For a significant chapter of my life, running was my outlet of choice. Pre-dawn, feet making music against the pavement, I would settle into the monotony of a rhythm that swallowed me whole.

I felt both everything and nothing while I was running. Mind lost in thought, it was assumed my body would defy the odds. The more extreme the conditions, the better test of my merit.   

Darkness. Coldness. Exhaustion. These were the running partners that challenged my soul.

Fast forward and I haven’t run in years. Not in the formal sense of racking up miles, of a journey that would require me to peel off my sweat-soaked clothes with an admitted degree of smugness with myself.

No, I realized the other day, as I was out for a walk on an unseasonably warm winter’s day, wearing sweatpants, not spandex, hiking boots, not running shoes, I have not run in a very long time.

This is, of course, not about running.

But it is about the ability to spot – and embrace – when change occurs in your life.

And then having the courage to ask why. 

Why you once needed something and now crave it no longer.

Why the ways you get energy and choose to expend it have shifted.

When is the last time you took inventory of the things that make you you? When you looked at the way you spend your time, fill your days, and asked yourself: Does this music even speak to me anymore?

Or – is it your instinct, when that voice starts to creep up with curiosity, to bury your head in the sand and lace up your proverbial shoes?

Change is not only an inevitable fact of life, it is an underrated and misconstrued marker of growth.

The more we can learn to sit with it, to cozy up to the nuances between then and now, the better the chances of respecting our journey.

Of realizing the running wasn’t about running after all.

You have your own version of sweat-drenched clothes. Of markers implemented as rules for your existence. Ones we think are telling us we’re living, we’re evolving, when they’re often just a costume for disguising the truth.

So next time it dawns on you that you used to be different, my hope is that you smile. That you see your former self through a lense of compassion. Of respect. Of love.

Because living doesn’t happen while we’re out pounding the pavement. Or stacking up the pursuits we feel are noble or proof of our worth.

It comes when we decide to drop the weight of who we think we should be.

So we can finally step in to who we’ve become.