My Conversations

100 Days of Wonder – #38

I am very very grumpy about fireworks this evening so you’re not getting a fireworks picture – fitting though it would be for the English context anyway. I have been prompted in various ways recently to think about the stories we tell ourselves. Now I don’t need much to send my imagination off into all sorts of directions and sometimes that’s brilliant but sometimes it also means that I am quick to construct a narrative that is perhaps not helpful. I was thinking about exactly that as I set off for my run this afternoon. The initial story in my head was about how I am not very good at running, how I felt tired, how I was too full, how soup wasn’t great for running on, how I hadn’t drunk enough water and how it was probably all going to be awful. That all went through my mind in the first 4 minutes and I nearly turned round. Then I remembered that these things are all stories we tell ourself. It’s all in our head. If I can tell that story, I can also tell a different one and which one I believe is up to me really. So my story changed to one about privilege to have the flexibility to go out and run and make use of the daylight, about how running would wake me up or at least provide the physical tiredness to match the brain tiredness from work, how 30 second intervals were easy and most importantly about how I was a runner who belonged here just as much as all the speedy people who zoomed past me. I wasn’t really expecting it to have quite such as dramatic impact but it changed my run completely and I had 7 completely uneventful miles that were partly even really joyful. Then I ran out of light and got a bit scared of falling (just another story I tell myself though) so walked the remaining 2 miles home. I had fun even though I hadn’t been expecting actual fun, more type 2 fun..

So why the photo? Well, we stayed in Adventure Tower when we went to Disneyland in 2016 at the end of a pretty epic Californian road trip. I remember arriving and commenting on how fitting it was to be in Adventure Tower after our adventures just gone and our adventures to come. I remember us talking about the road trip and shaping our memories into our stories and I also remember being nudged to think about what sort of adventures might await and what stories I might tell about them. And somehow that stuck with me and I like the idea of starting each day in my own Adventure Tower, with adventures, small and large to be had, stories to be discovered and told and dreams to be chased and lived. So the photo is just a prompt to remind us all to embrace the adventure and tell our stories in ways that they help us find joy.