Defending my discontent...

To be honest, sometimes I assume something is wrong with me. I have this conversation time and time again with friends and family... And it comes down to thoughts like "Everyone else seems to be getting on with things. What's wrong with us?"

But it seems that we're all in a bit of a riddle that we think we SHOULD have the answer, and yet none of us seem to.

I think I should be more content in finding a job, settling down, being happy with my athletic pursuits, and so on.

Maybe I just peaked too early. I went for Ironman and now, settling back seems almost like getting on with life and, yawn...

So, yeah, there is a nagging discontent that I feel almost daily. Truthfully I'm just not, and I don't know if I can without continuing to push the envelope of myself. This is where Ironman has become such a quest. It's not even about Ironman, but about a part of myself that I know can never be completely fulfilled, and yet, with each attempt, I draw closer and closer. I love the exploration of how to put it all together, knowing full well I have never put it all together. In three attempts at Ironman, I've finished it gloriously and with the anticipation of a newborn, I've been forced to drop out of contention through injury in 2005, and then in 2006 I've battled through different obstacles just to get to the start line and then to the finish line. Each has been an offer to say "hey, great job, you've made it" and back off and get back to the world of being a "former Ironman athlete".

In my discussions, this has definitely drawn other life parallels out. I really have never been content in a job... And that really is not a secret and has been as evident in my career switches as in anything else.

So I think about career, career, career... I chatted with my mom about this the other day and I came up with the following conclusions about my eventual career of choice. I have to have independence, and I'm not good working for someone else exclusively. In other words, I like working for myself. And I like flexibility in a job. So, there's that... Well, when you know what you want, you attract it to you.

But it sure lends itself to a lot of discontent.

Often, when my discontent is too much to bare, I have buried it beneath "busy-ness" and frenzied thoughts, and tried to escape it with t.v. It's funny, because I won't even work out or exercise when I become overwhelmed.

Even though I try to ignore my discontent, it cannot be eradicated... And that is where I think we go wrong sometimes. We TRY to bury it. But our discontent, I read recently, is really our desire trying to express itself. And that is the essence of our soul, and our existence. It's no big secret, really. After all, absolutely nothing of any significant human achievement is ever accomplished without desire.

Desire fuels our search for the life we prize.

Life as usual is not the life we truly want.

G.K. Chesterton wrote this, "We have come to the wrong star... That is what makes life at once so splendid and so strange. The true happiness is that we don't fit. We come from somewhere else. We have lost our way."

To flesh this thought out, the meaning of our life is revealed through experiences that, at first, seem at odds with each other - moments we wish would never end and moments we wish would never have begun.

If we're not where we need to be, why should we be happy to be away from there. And that's why I call this a quest. I'm not there. I'm not even close. I'm missing things. I'm incomplete. But I'm constantly searching and looking for the signs that tell me "that's where you should go"... The beautiful girl I met who captures me in a way I haven't been captured by other beautiful girls before (this is admitting that I want to be "caught").

I don't desire to fit in, to get by, or any of that. I want to use the journey to Ironman, to love, to life, as a journey towards very high desires. Some might say "kingly".

All this comes down to how I explain my need to keep with Ironman and endurance racing. To me it really is just part of a larger explanation for how I want to live. I never want to finish and feel like I arrived. Don't get me wrong, I want some very big things to happen. I want love, I want a family, etc. but I never will feel like this is the end... That I have arrived.

I'm returning to the journey. Like Frodo at the end of the Lord of the Rings, I can't go through all that, and come back to the shire, and just tend to the gardens. Not how I am built... That, for me, would be forfeiting my desire and my soul...