"Comfortably Uncomfortable"

            “Just breath.” No breath came. I was gasping for air, but it no longer helped. “It can’t be that much farther,” I told myself with my legs screaming in agony. I wanted to stop running. I wasn’t going to quit. I kept on with the wind in my face. I looked down at my watch. It said I had been running for thirty minutes, so I thought to myself that’s about four miles at a seven thirty pace. I had set out on a five mile course, so that meant only one mile left, but in my head I knew I hadn’t actually run fast enough to do four miles in thirty minutes. This was just one of the small lies I tell myself to keep me going. “Ooh, there’s a house I recognize,” we must be getting close to the school, again talking my way into proceeding. “I can see the entrance, this is the final leg,” and all of a sudden I conjured up the strength to lengthen my strides and finish off strong.

This was a day like any other of track and field practice. No run was ever suppose to be just a stroll. If there was no pain then it wasn’t helping. Every day before the team split up into their events the head coach, Thomas Jacobs, would give his speech to the entire team. There were the weekly events, what each event would do that day, and some kind of inspirational words, whether they applied to track and field or just real life in general. His famous words that I’ll never forget were “comfortably uncomfortable.” Nothing was ever suppose to be easy. “If something wasn’t worth working for it wasn’t worth doing.”

These words applied to track and field, but they can be applied to basically anything. If something is easy then you can already do it. It’s all about pushing yourself to do things that you don’t think you can. At the same time, there is a limit to anyone’s abilities and you don’t want to hurt yourself. Life is all about balance, and finding that point that requires all your focus and effort, but isn’t damaging to you physically or mentally. In the case of track and field, I was a long distance runner and I had to find that distance and speed each day that would push me to the limit each day.

Testing ourselves is what helps us learn and get better. Being comfortable is overrated because with comfort comes stagnancy.  We didn’t learn how to walk from crawling and we didn’t learn to run from walking. Of course we did one before the other, but it was the fact that one day we tried to walk or we tried to run. We don’t get new from the old. We choose to be new and get rid of the old. The world evolves from people who are “comfortably uncomfortable.”