Accepting Reality

This is not the picture of my imagination-- not exactly what I saw on a drive home, but it is the tree. It's really beautiful in real life, nearly half green and half red. When I first saw it, I thought it might be a good representation of my "all or nothing" mentality. It turns out, the picture is a better representation of learning to deal with reality.

I usually try to do more important things first, but this morning I went biking right after the kids got on the bus. There was a 30% chance of rain that was going up to 80% by 11 o'clock. I chose to seize the moment. About five minutes into my ride, I felt strong pain. Normally, I would have taken a shorter route just in case, but I wanted a picture of that tree. That meant an hour-long-plus route. I thought the pain might subside. Sometimes it does that. But it just intensified. Several times I thought I might have to get off the bike and walk or call somebody for help. I pushed on anyway. I wanted a picture of that tree.

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Finally, I saw it. It is striking, even from a distance. I wanted to get close enough that power lines wouldn't be in the picture. As soon as that happened, it sounded like ten dogs started barking and yelping at me. I figured they were penned up, but I didn't want to get any closer. I imagined the dogs alerted the owner of the house and that they might wonder what I was doing taking pictures. So I stayed where I was, a fair distance away. The dogs kept barking. I took two lousy pictures and left.

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The pain more or less went away. I took the pictures, made it home before a downpour, and got some exercise along the way. It wasn't ideal, but I feel healthy and at peace. I guess that's good enough.