Pride. And then a tangent about human nature.

Let me begin by saying that since this whole running thing began back in July, I have never thought of myself as a Runner. And I probably never will. But there have been a few things I've noticed recently about my running that please me no end. At the risk of making you hate me, I'm going to brag for a bit:

~Before I started running, I considered anyone who could run a mile straight without taking a break to be a true "runner." And something of an athlete. And I can do that now! It's not even that hard! And it makes me happy.

~There have been two mornings so far that, after I finish my run, the remote control for my car is FROZEN. Yup. I'm tough enough to run when it's that cold outside.

~One morning, as I was driving home from my run (yup, I drive to Vangie's house. How lame is that? But there were a bunch of break-ins happening in the neighborhood, and I figured it was better to be safe than sorry), I drove by a woman out jogging. I saw her and my knee-jerk reaction was, "Wow! Who gets up this early to go jogging??? That woman is so hard-core!" And then I realized that I had done just that, too. And I flushed with pleasure at my own hard-coreness.


All this leads to a totally different point. My friend Juliana wrote to me recently and mentioned that, although she was had been running all summer, she would not consider herself a runner because what she was doing was really just some slow jogging. And I read her email and nodded to myself, thinking, Well, that is exactly true for me, too. I'm certainly not out there sprinting! And that's why I'm not a Runner! But then I thought some more. Based on my pre-running definition, what we were doing definitely should have counted as running. It just didn't seem to count in the same way now that we could do it.

Why is it that as soon as we reach a milestone, we immediately decide that the milestone was too easy or should be moved a bit farther away or just doesn't count? I'm not sure if it's human nature or some weird way of being humble or what, but I see myself doing this all the time. I tell myself I can't cook. I work hard to try new recipes and get a lot better at cooking. But I still don't consider myself anything like a good cook. I have a bunch of kids and I work and work and work at trying to be a half-way decent mother to them. But I still don't think of myself as being much of a mom. I spend a lot of time looking around at other moms and trying to understand what they're doing, because I'm sure it's got to be better than whatever I'm doing.

I'm not necessarily saying this is a bad thing. When there's so much room for improvement (and it turns out there's room for improvement in EVERYTHING we bother doing), it only makes sense to keep looking for ways to improve. It would be pretty sad if I just let myself be satisfied with whatever status quo* I've already managed to reach. But what I am saying is that maybe it's okay to let ourselves actually reach some of those milestones and goals.

Maybe it's okay to think of ourselves as being kind of good at the things we're learning to do. We can do that without turning into snobby, prideful people, right? Without falling into the pit of feeling smug and better than other people? Maybe I should be trying to think of myself as a runner. Or someone who can follow a recipe with some level of competence. Or even a decent mom.

I mean, why not?



*I have to say it: "Because the status is NOT quo!"