I was so used to taking life at a docile pace. I saw pretty things along the path and I filed them away. I always meant to go back. I said someday I would do it. It was only once I realized that I’d been casually meandering in the wrong direction that it occurred to me to run. Run as fast as I could towards everything. Perhaps it wasn’t wasted time, maybe it was a journey I couldn’t yet be ready to make. All I know is that time had passed and I had never come back to things I really wanted to do, the places I really wanted to see.

Now I’m running briskly, faster than I could’ve imagined. I’m lapping even my expectations of myself. I’ve come so far, so fast. And so it is natural that some days I stumble. Some days I’m tired and my bones are weary. I become careless, I trip over minor things. Some days I wake up to a mess I inherited from an exhausted version of myself. It’s easy to succumb to the guilt in that, but it’s just as easy to catch up. To rise from the ground and take one step, and then another. By the end of the day I’m back on track, I haven’t been deterred at all.

And so I don’t fret over the days when I fall victim to my path. I don’t chide myself over the limitations of my far exceeding body. Stumbling is natural and making it up is easy. It’s far more important that during this race I’ve joined, I don’t lose sight of what drew me to this path, the beautiful things I earmarked in wonder. It’s all worth it, and you don’t have to acquire it at any costs. It’s already yours.