Slow Jogs

  Yesterday, I went out running.
  Slowly.

  Which is strange, because on Sunday morning, I was an award-winning runner!  That's right--age-group champion at the local 5k!  (It helped just a bit that there was a 10k and a half-marathon at the same time, meaning all the seriously fast runners were competing in those, leaving just a few of us in the 5k.  I finished 10 minutes ahead of the 2nd place runner in my age group, and it wasn't because I was running quickly.
  But I ran much, much faster on Sunday than I did yesterday.

  I can almost hear you cry out--'Why did you run so much faster on Sunday?'

  I had someone to pull me along.

  When I was racing on Sunday, there were people in front of me to set a pace, to keep me accountable, that served as motivation when I was running.  I wanted to catch them, and I knew that if I slowed down, I'd be caught by those behind me.  That was a powerful motivator.

  When I was out on my own yesterday, there was no accountability.  If I slowed down, nothing happened.  There was no one to catch me, no one for me to catch.  I could have walked and no one would have known.  I was all by myself.

  Life is harder by ourselves.  When we're alone, and accountable to no one, there often aren't consequences for slacking off.  When we don't have partners to walk with us, we drift, because it's hard to keep yourself disciplined.  We're made to be together, to encourage and support one another, and slogging through alone, without a community, is tough work.  Much tougher, and it's so much easier to stop when you're doing tough work alone.

  So may you find a community.  It often takes work to find and create one, but I truly believe this initial work pays off many times over, as the rest of the journey is much, much easier when someone else walks with you.