The True Size of The Universe

I ran Hood to Coast this weekend. I wasn’t planning on running Hood to Coast, I had important plans on Friday night and had actually turned Hood to Coast teams down because I couldn’t cancel my plans. However my teammate from TNT called me on Friday night at 10:30pm telling me one of the runners on his Hood to Coast team got injured and they needed someone to fill in. (I am not always one to fully think things through, so I jumped at the chance to run) Once I finished my Friday obligations, I rushed home, packed a bag and met Kevin and my now Hood to Coast team at 1am. I was the first one running in the van and started running at 3am.

I was hyped up on adrenaline and took off racing. My team had an incredible ability to run freakishly fast so I felt the pressure to also run freakishly fast. I cannot remember the last time I pushed my legs so hard but I did and started passing runners and pretty soon I was alone, on a back road running at 3am. That’s when it hit me.

My mind started racing, “Shit, I am alone, am I lost? What if I am lost? What happens if I am all alone?” Even though vans passed me intermittently and I passed runners, I couldn’t calm my fear of becoming lost. This is the moment I came to accept, being lost in the desert wasn’t something that I could just overcome with time; that I am potentially permanently changed from the experience.

Fast forward to Sunday (the rest of Hood to Coast was amazing and my team kicked some serious ass) and I was listening to a the Ted Radio Hour podcast and on it was John Hodgman and he said this quote “You don’t understand the true size of the world until someone you care about is out there in it and you don’t know where. That is when the universe really feels big… and when they come back it feels good.”

And I heard that and I lost it. Completely lost it. Sit on the floor, crying, lost it. That moment, in the desert, I truly understood the size of the world. No one knew I was out there, no one knows and will never know what it was like to be out there lost. I am back to work, school started, running, seemingly thriving in my life and yet there are these moments of complete utter disconnect.

I have prided myself on being very independent, on being able to go out and do anything on my own. Yet now I have this chip on me, I have this fear of being lost. I am scared to go back out on my own and adventure and yet I have aligned my personality on being able to being solely independent.

So now what?

I feel stuck. I have this fear of being alone and lost and yet I have this feeling of lack of connection with anyone I am come in contact with, like I am floating on a different planet.

When I slow down I feel hollow.

I still feel lost in the universe and I want to come back and I want it to feel good, just as John Hodgman describes it.   

And as painful as it is to work through these emotions, I know in the end, there will be something beautiful that comes from it. Thich Nhat Hanh has this quote “Without fear, we are able to see more clearly our connections to others. Without fear, we have more room for understanding and compassion. Without fear, we are truly free".

I am working to move past my fear and connect with the world the surrounds me, maybe running off into the wilderness doesn’t always need to be my escape. Maybe, just maybe, being surrounded by others can heal me and teach me to grow in ways different than the wilderness.  

It is all in the glorious journey.