Loving the weather you’re with . . .

Contemplating a morning jog this morning was tough. I knew my body needed it, but the weather was so ominous – grey sky, fresh squally winds. . . . fortunately I made the call to go.

On this day I was in the zone and running well, feeling good in my body. But half way through my energy collapsed. I started feeling lonely and bleak. Lonely because there were few other joggers around on the usually busy Princes Park track. Bleak in that “winter bleak” depressive kind of way when you notice there are no leaves on the trees, the sky has lost it’s radiance and even the grass seems sparse and sad.

This bleak feeling is very familiar to me and I could see my mind wondering into my day ahead and adding a wash of ‘bleak-ness’ to everything. It’s a sad, defeated feeling like the day is ruined now because everything is bleak. Perhaps, like yesterday, I would need to relieve myself mid-afternoon with a thick Hedgehog slice from the local café and feel the rush of 15 minutes of sugar-high followed by 2 hours of sluggish afternoon.

Fortunately I caught myself on this occasion spiralling into this mindset and considered a different take on it. I was still running well, and when I consciously shifted my perspective I could easily find joy in the freshness of the air and gratitude in so many things around me: my healthy body, the ground I was running on, the trees, the vast sky, even that we have seasons at all!

I thought of the footballers who play-on despite the weather and how I could choose to run through the cold wintery conditions in a state of defeated resistance, or to cut through the air like a Gazelle on a hunt . . . ok I have a vivid imagination . . . but you get the point.

Doing a gratitude reflection while in active running mode gives a different quality to the more passive sitting meditative mode. I do enjoy mixing the energies of the penetrative running (masc) with the receptive appreciation (fem) for what is around me. I wonder if the footballers go there?

Anyway . . . on with my day and I will watch my slippery mind until I don’t, and I hopefully won’t find myself back at my local café for my chocolate rescue remedy – at least not two days in a row.