Costly impulses

Finding myself in a great emptiness when I mentally start preparing for the upcoming running workout. It's taking few hours for me to get into the zone. I am feeling the loaded exhaustion from this new exercise schedule. At the first few kilometres I am getting lots of feedback from various parts of my body. Some of them disappear in a while, others disappear with some recovery routines. I think on that Sunday afternoon, I am running just to complete this run. Nothing more.

For all the months I questioned when and how the sports should exist in my life, I thought I found a good balance. It wasn't the most consistent schedule, but I was alternating over a handful of them, trying new drills every once in a while, changing my environment as seasons pass, and pulsating with my own rhythm. I spent hours thinking on how to cultivate exercises in my life sustainably. I didn't want the triathlon sports, especially the cycling and swimming be something temporary. I loved them deeply, I learnt them so late that now I don't want to lose them.

Sometimes, I have those flashbacks of myself cycling through the rusty streets of the city I was born in, day in and day out. I remember that feeling of, "Oh wow! Look at how far away I cycled this time from home" fuzzily. I knew my mother would be upset if I told her I wasn't just playing in the neighbourhood. I think I carried that voyager heart as a kid too. I didn't know what it did for me, but I was just happy. I was alone, didn't have much people to bond and connect with. However feeling the breezes going through my cheeks, watching the sunset go down through the hilly streets, drinking water from one of the street fountains and coming home drained and exhausted was making me fulfilled.

I am finding myself trying to convince people that I am doing the right thing, even though I have a feeling that this might cost me a great deal later on. After our lives went upside down collectively, I stopped working half the time for my job and tried to find ways how to help people affected. Collaborating with people I didn't know before, explaining the situation to people who might not be able to empathise, feeling constantly sad, desperate and helpless for weeks and months. I knew that I could give so I gave, and that's it. I didn't think too much how to give and when to stop. I think I was getting blind with the false sense of self confidence and giving more than I could sustain. However, the people I just met while helping and giving, made me build a sense of belonging towards them. More than I have ever felt before for my teams, my friends and at some points for my family.

I used to participate in social responsibility projects from time to time. I was donating every once in a while and I was helping others when I could. But this time, this need of giving away feeling was so prominent that I couldn't think anything else some days. We were trying to utilise resources, recruit more support and build sustainable infrastructure for more recurrent help to the region. I granted the people I collaborated through this journey another level of place in my heart. Because when I was running all over the place trying to help and make myself useful at any way, the people showed up, they understood me. They carried similar values that I was carrying in my heart. They were really good people.

We did the things we could, and we left the things we were not capable of. We learnt many things from scratch, we made many mistakes, we built a sense of a small community. We asked favours from many people and we just came together when it was needed.

I learnt from somewhat the hard way that, acting with thinking versus acting with impulses have some key differences. One is deterministic and the other one isn't. One requires calmness and the other one is usually heated with feelings. One requires more training, the other one is more premature. And the most important thing is the consequences of impulsive behaviours. So long as one can face them and handle them well, that should be fine too. However I learnt that I didn't want to act impulsively because the consequences of impulsive behaviours brought towards me; sometimes I couldn't handle well. When I was going through good emotions and a good mental state; the impulsive behaviours mostly didn't bring harm. However when I was at a darker mental state; it became the Pandora's box.

I think everyone has a limit at the level that they were trained to. There's only so much one can give away, one could receive impulsive behaviour with a neutral state. When I knew I was beyond my limits, I think I was acting with impulses. It was seemingly the right thing to do. But putting aside my mental wellbeing was impulsive. I was hurting myself just because there were others hurt, was impulsive. Not stopping working when I was told to give it a rest, was impulsive. And that's how I entered the path of self destroy. I don't know what I was running away from psychologically by keeping myself busy with all these things that I wasn't even supposed to do; but I was beyond the healthy limits of social responsibility. I think my physical and mental being were living in two different places.

This was too, a phase in my life I had to go through. The people I met, the connections I built with the people I already knew was so special. When I felt the support of the people I cared about, it felt so heart warming. Not that I have too many friends or family but being able to be heard by the people I cared about was touching. Despite our differences, our disagreements and our past, this time we were standing on the same side.

"Oh wow! Look at how far away I voyaged from home!"