Journeys....

I had a whiplash moment switch from WOO HOO! to oh holy fuck today.

I got on my treadmill knowing I had one more workout to complete for one of the two series for November. Gold star time. Getting that badge even though I had to take off two weeks with Covid. Even with not being 100% after testing negative. I was 36 minutes away from being done DONE with that series. 

I even did a little happy song during warmups. Thirty six....oooh ooh...Thirty six and I did it. I diiiiid it...wooo oooh...

Then the workout started and I clicked over to the screen that shows me the overall workout and...

Oh holy fuck. Like literally out loud. Oh holy fuck. What you are looking at is a workout that the majority is spent at a 13% incline. Thirteen percent. Oh my god... so much for a thirty six minute easy to finish this series out workout. Okay...well. 

Got that badge though. 

And it was a really good finish to the series. Strong finish. Not just because it was a 13% incline hike up a mountain in Bhutan to hang some prayer flags but...strong. 

The whole workout series has been about happiness. How do you find it? What do you need to do to get it? And after a year of reading and rereading self help books it sort of fit in with that theme. The books I enjoyed the most were in that personal contentment realm. The ones I liked the least were how to be a better cog in the corporate wheel. 

And today's was the two different trainers that had been trading off workouts, hiking together and talking about what they had learned, what they were going to take away from their time in Bhutan. And this is where I gasped out a few yes, that's rights. (13% INCLINE! yes, I was breathing a little deep)

Casey Gilbert, one of the trainers, had talked before about how the past couple of years had been hard for him. He was trying to really drive himself to greater feelings of accomplishment in his training career and it had been really hard. The pandemic hit that industry hard. But he had pivoted to doing things online and with iFit and he was doing okay. Success. But how much is enough? He talked about feeling lost. How there were more times than not that he'd wake up in the morning and just not feel the joy in life. And he recognized and acknowledged he had a good life. Good marriage. Good kids. Good career. Just he felt very meh about it all. (Of course for those of us playing along at home this was the time we were all saying, dude, this is depression, go to a doctor, it's okay.)

So in this wrap up workout he was talking to Kenton Cool about how he had come to Bhutan, agreed to do this series, with the plan of finding happiness. Of actually being able to say, ah ha, this is it and this is what I need to do. But while he found moments of real joy and real happiness during the hikes, during the meetings with the Buddhist monks, he still woke up some of the days thinking...meh.

And then he had a moment...

That's okay. 

It's okay to not be happy all the time. Happiness is actually moments. 

Yes! That! 

We often get really wrapped up in trying to be happy that we lose the plot. We think that true happiness means happy all the time. And it just doesn't. It can't. Nobody is always happy. If you are happy all the time happy just becomes normal. Not something special or extra or different. 

Happy. Sad. Angry. Pensive. Meh. These are all pieces of who you are. 

Me? I strive for happy more than not. But I know it's not possible to always be happy. And how fucking annoying would it be if I was? 

But also, striving to be happy, the journey to happy. That's important too.

And we often lose sight of that. That the journey we are on in life is the actual point. The way we walk through the world matters. It's not always going to be happy. Sometimes it's going to be at a 13% incline. But just keep walking. 

I got my badge today for this series but I also got that reinforcement of my life ideals. That happiness matters. That seeking it out is a worthy endeavor. And most importantly that it comes in moments. 

It was a strong finish.