Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Today I want to talk about some of the origin story of Serenity through Sweat. This last run got me feeling the same way I did all those years ago, and then thinking about how far we’ve come.
Serenity through sweat was born as a tagline in November of 2010. It was part of my grieving process after the loss of some close friends.
I’m not sure where the inspiration for the tagline came from. Maybe I had been watching Firefly on Netflix, I’ve always been overly sweaty individual, and almost every activity that induces sweat has some sort of ability to change your mental state. Wherever it came from, I put it in writing twice in the weeks following that tragedy.
What I do know is there was something in my mental state that changed, enough for me to perceive it, analyze it, and for the concept to stick with me. “Serenity through sweat, if only for the briefest of moments”. Despite the grief, despite the loss and the depression, physical exertion past the point of sweat, was a mental and emotional oasis, even if it was a temporary destination.
I remember one of those first two workouts was going to play Ultimate frisbee at our Wednesday night league. We played on a set of soccer fields under the lights from 8-10 pm, out in the middle of nowhere. On cool enough nights (like this particular one in November) with a low level temperature inversion, all the sweat would evaporate and form a low fog over the fields.
On that particular night, full of grief, full of anger and denial, I remember thinking it was a field of dreams. This soccer field lighting up the darkness in the middle of nowhere, shrouded in a fog produced from sweat. I felt as though crossing the invisible barrier of the field somehow kept all the emotion on the other side, and I was free to run, to sweat, and to heal.
This memorial day run reminded me of those first visits to serenity. The anxiety of not knowing the future of my job, the stress of sheltering in place with two young children, the sleep debt continuing to accumulate with a newborn, fear over a potential health threat to my family that can’t be seen. All of these emotions have been brewing for weeks now, and my mental state was in need of alteration.
Being a particularly rainy and dreary day thanks to the tropical weather from Bertha was perfect. The outside picture matched my mental state, and the rain would help keep the temperature down and blanket some of the wind. Plus, there is something cleansing about rain, especially running in it.
As soon as El Duderino was snuggled down for his nap I made my getaway without waking him up and strapped on my running shoes. My sunglasses were splattered with rain droplets and fogged up before I even got out of the neighborhood, and my shoes were starting to squish with each step before the first mile, but none of it mattered. I had crossed that same imaginary barrier, and for the next fifty nine minutes and seven seconds, I was in an altered state.
While I don’t think it is a place you ever get to fully stay, I’m very grateful to be able to go back and visit often, if only for the briefest of moments.
Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.
