My mood on Sunday...

could be summed up in a song. Sunday, that song was Blink off of Rick Elias' album of the same name. Rick Elias, formerly of the Ragamuffins (Rich Mullins' band) and cowriter of some of the songs in the movie That Thing You Do (Which, BTW is how I can connect myself to Kevin Bacon in less than six steps) wrote an amazing song. I don't know that it's something to put on the training disc, but I thought I'd put it up here anyway.

Blink
Written by R.Elias, R. Hamm, S. Rogness

Relentless stirring memories I'll only visit in my dreams
Beneath a bed of virgin snow A sheet of ice on fallen leaves
I found the man behind the face
And I prayed he wasn't me
But I was wrong

Do you lie alone and silent
Question just where you belong
Have you traced it to a place A time a thought To anyone,
You seize the golden moment Only to hold on for too long
Then it's gone

In the blink of an eye It all changes
With a kiss and sigh Love whispers your name
It's here and gone Then life goes on
Passing like a ghost on the water
And if I could I'd stand against the tide
Turn your tears into wine
In the blink of an eye

Too much of the future baby Too much of the past
You find yourself obsessing over things that never last
The odds were all against us And the die's already cast
Something's wrong

In the blink of an eye It all changes
With a kiss and a sigh Love whispers your name
It's here and gone Then life goes on
Passing like a ghost on the water
And if I could I'd stand against the tide
Turn your tears into wine
In the blink of an eye

I have followed my convictions I have stood behind my nerve
At least as I recall
I've embraced the contradictions have faced at every turn
If I've learned anything at all
It's that it all changes In the blink of an eye

It's true, I think. Everything CAN change in the blink of an eye. Angela and I watched Life As A House Saturday evening. Kevin Kline stars as a cancer stricken man broken free of the moorings that have held him down when he's fired from his job and given four months to live. Knowing that he only has a limited amount of time, he decides to do the thing he's dreamed of, reach for the apple that's been stuck like a glint in his eye the 25 years he's lived in his shack. His soul resembles that shack and it's trapped him since his dad left it to him all those years ago. But the change that happened in the blink of an eye set him free. He takes his son home for the summer to try and redeem his relationship. At first there's no change, but at the tipping point he corners his son and tells him this... "Change can be so constant, you don't even feel the difference until there is one. It can be so slow that you don't even notice that your life is better or worse, until it is. Or it can just blow you away. Make you something different in an instant."

I like what he's saying. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the same thing in The Tipping Point. Everything's the same until it's different. In a blink, the processes that were unseen suddenly become seeable... and it's the small changes that make the difference. Crime goes down in the subway when graffiti is arduously painted or washed away any time it's seen. The graffiti artists frustrated that their multi-night works move on. The subway cars begin to look better and people have a sense of pride of ownership again. Criminals begin to wash away with the fading graffiti and seemingly in a blink the crime rate drops precipitously.

I was trying to find the moral of this article and it just dawned on me that it comes from something I read over at NutBolt today.

3. Don't wait until you are married, have kids, retire, have time, or any thing else. Start now! Something else I kind of already knew, but hadn't put in practice. The kind of actions and habits you have now determine the kind of man you will be. For me this means I need to consistently pray everyday and be more courteous.

Change, while it may be going on in the background and will surprise you can also be a conscious action. In Life As A House, Kevin Kline paid a price for his change. The love that he won from showing his son love was only experienced for a short time. All of those years he could have done something were lost. What he got back was priceless, but what he could have had would have been immeasurably greater. Of course we wouldn't have had a story, but the point remains.

Choosing to do an Ironman was a tipping point, everything forward in my life was altered by that decision. All kinds of things that wouldn't necessarily be grouped together, changed as a direct result of that action. It was so physically strenuous that it reset my brain chemistry. I had been on antidepressants before the Ironman. My prescription ran out before the race and I decided to see if I could wean myself off of them. I had tried before and it was an ugly withdrawal. For some reason, it never came back after the race. Just that would be an immeasurable change, but there were others like self esteem. I'm not a big fan of unearned self-esteem. I think it cheapens the earned self-esteem. Lance Armstrong hasn't done an Ironman! (He hasn't, but I'm speaking in jest, he'd still kick my flabby hidden from the sun Iron derriere) It also showed me that big things were achievable. Suddenly the company moving to Colorado and me with them wasn't QUITE as scary (ok, it FREAKED me out the first couple days) but it wasn't the worst thing in the world anymore.

I'm blathering on, but it's still a thought to keep in mind. Don't wait for change. Don't fear the prospect of a change. If you think it's going to hurt now, imagine how much more it's going to hurt later... shining light on the darkness is the only way to make it go away. Kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. (Ok, that's an entirely different song, but another that I could probably go on about for a couple thousand words.)

There's more to say I'm sure and this entry is incomplete, but it'll finish itself in time. At the very least, I made the decision to start it and that's sometimes the hardest part of the process.