I am not my mileage.
I am not my weight.
I am not my bodyfat.
I am not a number.
I am not what I do.
I am not what I can't do.
And neither are you any of those things.
I'm a whole, entire person, complete with quirks, guilt complexes, and delusions of grandeur (in my case). I bet you're pretty complex, too.
I am often hit in the face with reality.
I often bump up against my dreams and find they are, indeed, impossible.
I do my best! I angrily say to myself. Not always! I angrily answer. Sometimes, I decide to coast. Sometimes I don't put 100 percent into whatever it is that I claim to want. If I really wanted it, nothing would stop me, right? Somewhere along the line I decided I didn't want it—whatever it is— quite that much.
Sometimes my best just isn't good enough ... for me. Because ultimately, there's no one else who cares. There's no one else I have to please, except myself.
Just me. Unfortunately, I'm one tough customer.
Which is why I have to remind myself of who I really am. So this is my little reminder.
19 comments:
You are not your numbers but neither are any of us content to just be ourselves. We want MORE and we shall have more. We shall have more by getting up at the butt crack of dawn and engaging in unnatural activities like running for miles and miles. And we will not hold ourselves hostage to our results - we just just get high on our efforts. At least we'll try, right?
I'm with 21st mom, we all are partly a mileage and a number, otherwise we wouldn't try so hard. But I think it's also relative to how far we've come. I'm pretty happy with where I am, considering where I started.
wow. i couldn't disagree with 21stC any more. i am NOT my pace. i'm not my weight. i'm not my height. i'm not my income.
there is no number in my life that defines who i am. they've yet to invent a number, or a word, that defines me, and i can honestly say.. they never will.
hell i ran 3.5 miles this week... that does not define who i am.. this week or any week! and i would hate to live the kind of life where it did.
this is a great post, one we ALL, obviously, need to be reminded of at times! well said jeanne. well said.
just what I needed... for a minute. Then it's back to thinking about what I want to be, and how I'm going to become it. But for a minute, I can just be in this moment, and be happy with what I now am.... whatever that is. ;) Thanks Jeanne!
Aren't we all a collection of zeroes and ones in a world of paper-rock-scissors?
That may be my profound thought of the year. Wow; and it's only March.
As runners, we're obsessed with numbers. Sometimes to our detriment. I agree that no number - or collection of numbers - define us.
By the way, the artist singing the song is Gavin DeGraw, and the song is "I Don't Wanna Be" from the teen TV show "One Tree Hill."
We are too complicated to be defined by one *anything*. And, wow, do those numbers change over the years, just as we do. Great post, Jeanne.
i came by because I was curious where you have been, not because bloglines had you in bold :( I even "resubscribed", so...
I knew I had heard that song before, glad Bex identified it! I like it, and I like your message.
Numbers, I love 'em, I hate 'em, but I always go back to them.
This is a great post, jeanne! I think we all need that reminder once in a while!
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. It is what it is, we are what we are. We could always do better, but sometimes we do just great. Sometimes we don't do so good. But we live with ourselves because that's who we are. Numbers are merely measurements along the way, but our true selves reside within us, and we know what each measurement really means.
Hi. I stopped by your blog after you visited mine. Wow! Glad I did. This is a great post to sit back, read, and reflect. Nicely put!
Jeanne, great post and an interesting assortment of comments. Numbers are a powerful thing, whether numbers on a finishing clock or on a bank statement. There have certainly been times in my life when numbers, in one place or another, have added or subtracted from my self-worth. One of the things I'm continually working at is focusing internally rather than externally for how to measure how I am and who I am. This lesson came home to me years ago when I visited a young man in a nursing home where he'd been residing since being paralysed from the neck down in a car accident. Having even lost the ability to speak, his only form of communication was with eye blinks. What defined him? Not numbers. Who I saw in that bed was a child of God, a human wonder, and that not only defined him but it made he and I equal in this world. It was a powerful movement for me....obviously since it happened years ago and I just went off about it.... :)
Correction to above comment, movement was suppose to be moment...you say potato I say potaato....
This is a great post, Jeanne. Very thought provoking. I've been known to coast, and then get mad at myself for not doing as well as I'd hoped. I've also BSd my way into an "A" in school, and knew in my heart I didn't deserve it.
In the end I guess what matters is that we were true to ourselves--and didn't hurt anyone getting the results we wanted.
you've got grandeur! they're not delusions.
you are an intergalactic princess with gogo boots (white patent leather, natch) and a sparkly gadget belt in my mind.
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