My Weaknesses

It has been said that while pursuing knowledge, one accumulates a little more each day. While pursuing the truth, one takes away a little more each day.

Many of the things we learn - our fears, insecurities, anxieties, self limitations - our weaknesses - we teach ourselves over a lifetime. The seeds of who we become are sown in our own life's experiences, and the water that nourishes them is our own imagination. Something happens to you when you are a child. A bad experience. A good one. Maybe a frightening one. Then life moves on, and you adapt. Maybe for the better. Or, maybe for the worse.

Which brings me back to weakness. Or more specifically, my weaknesses. I'm not fretting here, because we all have them. The question that I ask myself sometimes is whether I am aware of my weaknesses. Or do I keep them stuffed in a little box inside of me like a jack-in-the-box, winding them tighter and tighter every day until, heaven forbid, one bursts open and surprises the hell out of me. It's happened.

I wish I could say that I've dealt with all my weaknesses head on. But the truth is I haven't. Which brings me back to running. There is something about running, it's effect on the weaker side of who I am, that makes me want to come back to it. Because when I run, my fear of failure, my longing for vain and selfish things, the insecurities that lurk inside of me that I may never conquer, my faults and my failures - all these things - they just melt away.