And So It Begins

The first of many flights taking me to the greatest walk this planet offers routes me to Istanbul.  This was quite intentional - I'd never been there before, and despite some concerns regarding security, it's an historically incredible city.   The crossroads of where the old world met the new, and the juncture of Europe and Asia where the Black Sea leads to the Mediterranean.   

Turkey today is a confounding nation.  Part of Europe in so many ways but authoritarian when allowed, the mix of ethnic groups and large geography with "hot borders" (Syria) makes it tremendously dynamic. The current rulers seem to have foregone democratic institutions but unlike many of their neighbors, the population believes in it and so it will return.  

Istanbul is a city on par with Rome or Athens in (Western) visible history terms.  It's spectacular in terms of monuments, mosques and a seminal role in history.  It's strategic location guarantees it a place in history.  Straddling worlds and religions, Istanbul blends eastern mysticism with western thinking to arrive at a place utterly unique.  

I was as ever fortunate to spend a few hours here and share the sights I saw. 

Collections

I've been a collector of late, assembling memories and pursuing or searching for something.  I'm fascinated by the beauty in our natural world and have ventured far and wide and higher to experience these myself.

In a sense, I'm want to stop doing this, fearing that every new moment created will dull or blur the previous ones.  I hear people speak of 'trips of a lifetime', or other descriptors and I see the value of being face to face with the extraordinary and relishing it.  I don't wish to devalue each different experience in my own head, making the details that are so very vivid of one place, one time and how I personally experienced it fade or become jumbled with others.  This year I'll have had the good fortune to explore the mountains of Peru with my family and climb in the Himalayas with my son to the roots of Sagarmāthā and each of those efforts was incredible.  One didn't take away from the other, and like a tuning fork resonating acoustically long after the sound seems to be gone, each has stayed with me.

I'm about to embark on the next chapter, this time alone to try to experience more that is wondrous in our world. Again, I see my good fortune in having the means and ability to do these things, and have positive expectations of what it will be like.

As I learned from reading Bruce Chatwin long ago, walking is to reach for the divine, so I'm off to walk again and get back to the snow covered peaks and lush valleys that are so very magnetic to me, collecting more moments and memories.  In a sense I'm going home to where the pack on my back and my tired old feet will find the trail once more, and rounding every corner will be filled with possibilities.

Lost and Found

When I was a young person, coming out of high school I felt a little lost.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life, and the idea of continuing with school didn't seem like the right fit.  Being young and full of ego (and very little age-derived wisdom), I rationalized that I could get ahead of those in my own age bracket by getting a head-start in the job market, while they all pursued a waste-of-time university degree in some prosaic subject.  So I enlisted myself with a car sales job and then a temp. agency and worked in various fields.  I was an Accountant at McDonald's headquarters for a stint; I helped retrieve and archive State Farm's aged claims files for a while and did a packaging sort of job at IBM.  I even managed the printing presses at Bristol Meyers for a while and happily have all my fingers still.  Some of the temp jobs lasted longer than others, and some resulted in various job offers, of which I took none.  I viewed my task as surfing the buffet of choices in front of me, and with few responsibilities and little in terms of expense, I was choosy.

After almost two years of this (some roles last many months), I grew tired of the lowest rung on the ladder view of life, and decided I needed a change of pace.  I saved up some $$ and a close friend and I went to spend a glorious young person's summer backpacking in Europe.  BTW, it's called a summer backpacking as you don't want to do it when we did - starting in February.  To suggest it was cold and damp would be an understatement.  I fondly recall a 48 hour period travelling from Brighton to Algeciras in Spain in search of heat. All we found there instead were storm-drenched fellow young Morocco-bound tourists and locals trying to unload their heroin stashes.  When I left on that trip, I was pretty certain I'd made a mistake by avoiding a post secondary education, and a few months in Europe only cemented that opinion.

Since then, I've become acutely aware of that feeling of lost, and how good it seems when you make a decision to go forward (in any direction).  Since my very early twenties and that time in my life, I've been lost a couple more times, and arguably am again at present.  While the temptation to do something (anything!) is great, I have learned that any old decision, any old direction doesn't deliver that found feeling.  It presents itself as a good choice - and one you have to see for yourself.  The degree to which something feels right is also driven by how badly you want it I think.  Just as a great meal doesn't seem as tasty on an already full belly, the appreciation of finding the pathway again isn't as great if you're already engaged on it.

Now, I think there's merit in being lost occasionally.  It acts (for me anyways) as a reset button, a time to take stock and assess where you are.  Yes, you're standing still when it happens, and yes, you're making no progress towards an identified goal.  It can seem lazy, and self indulgent certainly.  However I also am mildly sympathetic to the macro-concept that there's a pathway that we're on. I prefer to think of this as a vector of sorts, a direction where I can determine speed and heading and progress, moreso than a pre-determined set of steps we are each experiencing.   On this vector of our lives, we can and will deviate on purpose or by accident, and our responsibility to ourselves is to try to stay true to where we think we should be going.  We consult with friends, family and those we trust for their opinions, but ultimately the choices are our own (or if you believe in it - some sense of divine providence).  To stop the everyday march of time in our lives and take a direction heading isn't a bad thing.  I'm fortunate to be able to do that, and I see that, knowing that not everyone is in that position.  For those that are 100% certain of their path and are chewing their way through it to achieve something specific, well, this must seem like some middle age wobbliness or worse, but to that I can only offer a smile if your pathway is that clear to you.

So, while I'm stopped at yet another of life's intersections, I plan to step off the road and smell the flowers on the verge, to enjoy this moment of being lost realizing that in the end it will be temporary and it can also be quite pleasant.

The Next Adventure

I'm prone to wander - always wanting to do interesting, challenging things and I've arranged the next big one.  I have some time off and so wanted to visit a few places I've wanted to go for a while, experience some new cultures, travel in ways I'm curious about, and tackle what's alleged to be one of the best hikes on the planet.  Of course all of this is in my backyard.  Not quite.

I won't let the cat out of the bag yet, but I will offer some pics to make you wonder.

Two Days after a Run

Your legs feel like concrete.
You ache in places that you didn't know you had.
The bottoms of your feet are tender still.
You remain quite tired as you aren't sleeping well as everything hurts when you move in the night, and it wakes you up.

It's the mirror-image of the level of effort reflected back at you, a reflection of what you put yourself through.  There's a small but quite real knowledge that you did it, you persevered, and whether you set a personal best, finished an extraordinarily hard mental run, hobbled across the line or know that you'll fight to run another day, you did it.  It's satisfaction.

Post marathon mindsets range from "I'm never running again", through to "I can do better than that, I know it".  The glow of having tried though, of having placed yourself against the grindstone and given it all you had at that moment...that is what it's all about.  That's why we run.

Marathons and the Love of ** Running (insert your loved thing here)

Here we go again.

In a few days, I'll attempt my second marathon.  Arguably that effort started in June this year when the training began, and this weekend will be the 'last 42 kms' of that long hot summer of running.  To date, I've logged 523kms / 313 miles in this program, so the last bit should be easy.

Well that's the plan at least.

In truth no marathon is ever easy, and in the last two months, I've been fighting an injury (healing would imply it's getting better), so the training has been less enjoyable than normal.  This is the heart of what I wanted to say today - the enjoyment aspect.  I was asked a few weeks back why I run.  In fact I think I asked it of someone else, having not given it much thought myself.  But it did cause me to reflect a little.  The answer wasn't forthcoming which was interesting (intellectually anyways) to me.  Why would I put myself through something as time consuming, painful, strenuous and stressful as this if I wasn't sure why I was doing it?  And - how had it gotten this far, without understanding that most basic aspect.

After a month or so of thinking casually on the subject, I arrived at the idea that I do it to see if I could do it. That most circular logic which would cause an Excel error in other circumstances, is really about testing myself, pushing myself.  It wouldn't be much of a test if I found it easy, now would it ?   Doing something because it represents a challenge is something I've seen in myself numerous times before.  It's good to push the limits of what you can do - at least that's something I believe in for myself.  Do you do that ?  The first time is always the magic on that litmus test of will-power by the way. After that, it does get harder as in a sense, you already proved to yourself you could do it.

So how will this weekend go ?  I'm unsure as I write this. Every marker will be one closer to the line, and every step will one I don't have to run again.  I think in a sense, it'll be a little sad that it's come to an end.

Is this Why Trump is Succeeding ?

I've been racking my brain lately to try and understand the reasons that Donal Trump is succeeding in the polls.  He's a racist, bigoted liar and seems able to transcend every standard in politics.  The American public is either incredibly stupid (which they aren't), or he's been able to single handedly evolve what's acceptable in an election, which is perhaps possibly likely but still unrealistic, or perhaps there's a huge backlash against Clinton - and that's also possible.

In thinking about this, and scratching my own head to try to figure out the guy's secret sauce, it struck me that there's a small but importantly nuanced difference in the two campaigns.  I went to both websites which to me act as reflection of their public positioning quite well.

Hillary talks about the issues, and how she'll tackle them. It's pragmatic, and seems thorough and is perhaps a little un-exciting.  She's drawing a picture of America's issues and what she will do about them.  If the question in the voter's mind  - their mindset - is show me your plan..then she has it nailed.

Compare that to the Donald's website.
Here's we see that he'll make America great again.  He paints a picture of a positive outcome that is admittedly very very light on details.  So - if the voter's mindset is 'Show me your plan', his position overall is weak.  I think that's been a commonly concluded fact that most of the media is well aware of about his campaign.

But the small and fundamental difference here is applicable to those who DO NOT have 'the show me your plan' mindset.  Now, we see Hillary talking about problems, and Donald talking about positive end-states.  Hillary doesn't think America is great today, and by electing her, it may never be if all her detailed plans don't work out. Donald is aiming to have the country great...and regardless of the bits between today and getting there - that's not a bad place to aim.  Arguably, it's an enviable place to move towards. Boil it down further.....Hillary = Problems and Donald = Great

Of course the devil is in the details, and without a realistic plan nothing will happen.  But in this one subtle area, Trump has Clinton seriously out politicked, and I suspect its a key piece of the positive perception he's benefitting from these days.