A Shortcut to the Finish Line?

I ran the Minneapolis Half Marathon last weekend.  The route was "out and back", meaning that when we got to a certain point, we turned around and ran back in the other direction.  There were a number of spots along the first half of the course where it would have been easy to just turn around and blend in with the runners who were already heading in the other direction, thereby cutting out part of the mileage.  Yes, that would be cheating, but it would have gotten me to the finish line faster, and almost no one would have noticed.

The problem is, doing that would have meant missing out on part of the course.  Maybe the best part. 

In our culture, we have this mentality of focusing on the finish line.  And it's understandable.  For runners, seeing that huge cheering crowd at the very end of the race, and then crossing the finish line and being given a medal (and more importantly, some Gatorade and a banana!), are fantastic rewards for the effort that we've put in until that point.  But there's more to running a race than crossing the finish.  There are rewards along the way.  Really valuable rewards. 

The same is true for all of life.  We spend so much of our time thinking about achieving a certain goal, or passing a certain landmark.  A small-scale example of this happened to me yesterday.  It was Wednesday, and all I could focus on was the anticipation of the weekend ahead.  I just wanted to get to Friday, and get on with my weekend plans.  But that mentality is problematic, because wishing away time means wishing away all the small beautiful things that happen during the interim.  An unanticipated summer rainstorm.  A lively discussion at book club.  A picnic in the park with some of my favorite ladies.  Listening to Ben tell me about his day.  Those are joys that I wouldn't want to miss for anything - even a shortcut to the weekend. 

This is an easy trap to fall into on a larger scale too. I remember my final year of high school, pining to get out of my parents' house and move into my college dorm, believing that with this transition would come a greater sense of independence.  I remember my last semester of college, just wishing for graduation so that I could move to Minneapolis and get started with "real life" (i.e. grad school, which in retrospect is a far cry from ACTUAL real life!).  I remember being single in my early 20s, so impatient about meeting the man of my dreams, essentially believing that nothing profound could happen until my goal of marriage was achieved.  In all of these cases, the over-focusing on an event in the future left me unable to really enjoy all of the great things that were happening in the present.

It's exciting to focus on the finish line - the end goal.  But in doing so excessively, we miss a lot of beauty along the way.  I am guessing that a lot of other people can relate to the lure of the finish.  I'd like to throw out this challenge to you: take a step back from whatever future point you are focused on today.  Be thankful for the present.  Run the entire race.  Enjoy the small beauty that is present in every step. The finish line will be there whenever you get to it.