The Stronger Pull

Let yourself be silently drawn
by the stronger pull of what you really love.
—Rumi

I want to tell you about running in the early morning, stepping away from the house and heading up the driveway, a quarter-mile long.

To run outside in the early morning began as an idea and then became a commitment to myself. I ran because I was able, and as spring passed into summer, and summer into mid-autumn, I continued, sweatshirt and windpants exchanged for shorts and tee-shirt, tank top, and then sweatshirt and running pants, reflective stocking cap, headlamp and blinking lights. I ran each morning from the earliest spring until the autumn rains turned to ice and snow.

 

 

I want to tell you about snowshoeing on a winter’s day, stepping from the house and heading across the field a quarter-mile to the shrubline.

To snowshoe in the cold of winter began as an idea when I was young. Trudging through covered fields, I conceived of snowshoes that would carry me above the snow. With snowshoes I would trek across great distances on Sunday afternoons, freed of my predictable home life, open to whatever adventure lay ahead. I would be as Lewis & Clark, I would be a fur trader, a lumberjack, an Arctic explorer. I would be free. To snowshoe in the depth of winter began as an idea and became a commitment to myself.

Today messaging comes from all corners — Be this! Do that! I am asked helter-skelter to consider possibilities endless in scope and direction. But I am drawn silently, inexorably by the stronger pull of what I really love. This cannot be helped.

 

 

Rumi. “An Empty Garlic.” The Essential Rumi: New Expanded Edition, translated by Coleman Barks, 50. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.