Revisiting the Treadmill part 1

A few months ago, I wrote a haiku about running on a treadmill:

stretch, walk, breathe, now sprint.
I'm running on a treadmill,
still getting nowhere.

My disdain for both running and gyms were the inspiration for this little verse. I hate running. Mostly because I'm not athletic and I suck at it; my legs go numb, I'm winded and my throat starts burning after 30 seconds of jogging outside. In order to improve, I've made a lengthy and sporadic attempt to improve by running on a treadmill over the last year and a half.

Unfortunately, this desperate act of improvement is nauseatingly boring and makes me feel like a hamster. It's so mechanical and sterile.

As I engage in my stationary exercise, with the rhythmic drumming of my feet as the soundtrack to my journey to physical fitness, it becomes clear that this is but a poor reflection of what running should be. I should be feeling the sun on my skin and the wind in my face! There's a whole beautiful world out there I could be running around in...hills, forests, coasts... but where am I? Running in place, inside a room full of metal and plastic, on a spinning slap of rubber!

This just isn't what we're made for.

I couldn't help but draw a parallel between this routine of mine with the rest of my life, as of late. I'm putting in all this effort in to...whatever it is I do...but I'm not really going anywhere. There's just a lack of novelty and there's no visible progression to what I'm doing. I'm working, studying and volunteering in the same place I've been for the last 17 years. It's all getting old. It's getting harder to keep the same pace. It's hard to be excited about what I'm doing. There's just this yearning to go somewhere else, do and see something new. These feelings of mine are definitely not "something new." It seems like they've been around forever! And I'm so tired of waiting for them to be satisfied. I imagine this is true for a lot of community college students...and anyone who is in a time of waiting for something.

On one particularly jaded day of feigned aerobic exercise, I was questioning the point of what I was doing, both in and out of the gym. In reminding myself of my external purposes, I felt the Spirit whisper in my ear:

You're right: this isn't what I made you for. Doesn't mean it's pointless.
You're training. You're getting stronger.
You are being prepared to run.

Let me clarify that God was not talking about my time running on the treadmill.