Doing hard things

Running, writing and having fun, or not.

I went for a run this morning and as much as I don’t like exercising, I always have a laugh on the way. This time it was cows. I mean, every time I pass cows, or sheep, or horses, I say hello. It would be rude not to. Most of the times, they’d look at me a little bit bored, probably asking themselves why am I behaving so strangely. But this time, the cows almost ran to the edge of the field they were standing in, just to have a look at me. It was so funny and surreal. I felt watched until I knew they couldn’t see me any more behind the bend.

Not the cows from my run, I don’t take my phone with me. These are the cows form the field behind my house.

Running is hard. Exercising is hard. I seldom find joy in it. But I have to keep doing it, as my body needs it. I have to make my muscles strong to keep the joints in their place, but also because I want to be fit and feel good in my body. So I exercise and maybe some day it will become easier, maybe I’ll find some joy in it.

Someone shared on Instagram a quote from the wall of their gym. ‘It’s never getting easier, you are getting better.’

It always irritated me when people told me that something will get easier at some point. And what if it won’t? What if it will keep being hard? Because as much as I believe that practice makes us better, I also believe that there are things I’m never going to get better at. And that’s fine. I’ll simply will have to find a way to accept it will be hard every time I do it, or move on.

Exercising is hard. And it will probably always be hard, but I can find ways to have more pleasure in it. I can try new things or I can stop overthinking it and accept that it is a kind of medicine I just need to take. It don’t have to like it, I just have to do it. Or I can keep looking for something I can enjoy. I can keep trying and maybe some day I’ll find something that I’ll be able to stick with and even find pleasure in doing it.

But pleasure is not always the point. With exercising and with writing. I don’t always feel like it, lately I don’t feel like it at all, but I need to keep doing it. Not necessarily to get better, but to keep my metal health stable, to be the person I want to be.

Some things never get easier and we still keep doing them. Not because we hope to get better at them, but simply because we know that this is what’s important. This is what we need to do, what we must be doing.