The Path Less Traveled By

The harder more disciplined and goal driven path is the one that gives us the most opportunities to learn who we are, what we are capable of, and where we have room to grow. If we keep a plant in the same size pot too long, it’ll eventually struggle to thrive because its nature is rooted in growth. We are made out of the same stuff. Growth is as much of a human attribute as walking upright.

It’s tough when we start visualizing how grand some aspect of the future might be only to discover that there will be many smaller steps and hardships that we need to navigate before we can enjoy that better future. This has been on my mind a lot lately because for the last several months I’ve been working with an orthotic brace maker to custom build a leg brace that will allow me to pick up running again.

Several times along this journey, I’ve hoped that we might have found a certain design or special technique that would make running easy: I’d arrive at a place where all I needed to worry about was the internal strength of my leg muscles, my heart, and lungs, and my will to keep going. In those moments I’d look back with a dose of the bittersweet that memories sometimes develop on years back when I was able to run marathon without these added difficulties. Unfortunately though, at each turn, the orthotic developer and I would have to make another tweak on the design.

Yesterday I took home a test brace that I’m really hoping is getting close that the final model that’ll work best for me, and this morning I took the brace for a first test run. And though I was very grateful for the chance to run again, it wasn’t easy. The brace will need some additional tweaks and the time I had to take off in training made me winded way too quickly.

What do we do in those situations? Do we abandon the original goal, deciding that our aspirations really weren’t that important or maybe we come up with alternate plans that feel more doable. I’m not an advocate for stubbornly sticking to original plans if alternatives really do present good and exciting and joyful opportunities. But, just like with this brace advantage, so often I’m reminded that as humans, the path of least resistance—the path that is the least painful, requires the least effort, and requires the least commitment and discipline—often holds a lot of appeal.

But in my life experience, the harder more disciplined and goal driven path is the one that gives us the most opportunities to learn about who we are, what we are capable of, and where we have room to grow. If we keep a plant in the same size pot too long, it’ll eventually struggle to thrive because its nature is rooted in growth. We are made out of the same stuff. Growth is as much of a human attribute as walking upright.