On Morning Inspiration

The other day I sat at work and was rather overwhelmed with this sense of unfamiliarity and uneasiness. Usually when this happens I cycle through a couple blogs and feel better. I visited smallchou's blog (since he's been on a roll lately) and was super amused by his story of racing an older Asian man on his bike into work. The thing that struck me though was that he had run six frickin' miles that morning before his bike ride into work. I was impressed but thought nothing of it. I just pictured him walking into work at Google, where some hired servant fanned him the rest of the day. That night I came home and went on my usual run but as I came to the end of it, I thought about smallchou again and got all fired up. "If he can run before work, I can sack up and run an extra mile or two after work," I thought. Sure enough not only did I run farther than I have ever run that day but I did it two more times!

These inspired runs led right into one of the best weekends of all-time. On Friday night I went to a BBQ at Ritz', came home and cleaned my place, and then went to a birthday party in the city. Oh but wait! Then our night began. We came back to my place, had a couple frosty beverages and played wii for a couple hours. Believe it or not we were waiting to go out again. The City of Chicago was throwing this all-night party downtown and we wanted to see the tail-end of it. We rolled to this community center downtown, which seemed abandoned. As we walked in, I got a HUGE smile on my face. At least a hundred people were playing chess, two to a table. Now I am talking people big and small; people black, white, brown, green; people in their 80s and people too young to cross the street. It was seriously an inspiring scene. We couldn't even get a table to play on. While all this is going on, the main hall has Classical Indian music, which was too popular for us to even get into!

My friends were fading fast and I made my last attempts to keep them awake. "Coffee? Red Bull? Come on Ritz!" The classic line of, "We really want to stay BUT we're tired." Alas, it was not meant to be. So the night was over..... well it would have been.

Rewind to a time before I moved and I probably would have gone home with them. I was determined to stay by myself and walk over to the park. They were going to have a CELEBRATION at sunrise. I grabbed a giant coffee and walked over to the park around 4:45 AM. I met a bunch of loving folks that were enjoying their night. We all sat in a big circle on the lawn at Millennium Park and waited for the festivities. What were they? YOGA! So at this point I had been up since 6 AM on Friday and I was doing YOGA in a park at sunrise at 5 AM on Saturday (in a hoody and hat nonetheless). I did many downward dogs and triangle poses as the sun warmed the park and then sat front row for a choir singing morning (WAKE UP!) songs. If that wasn't enough though Stavi (who's a med student) just got off call, picked me up and we went shopping for groceries. We came home, woke Ritz up and cooked a mean ass brunch, went for a walk and then I finally called it a night around noon.

As I stood there in the park at sunrise I had this weird feeling. Maybe what I think of as a emotional feeling of being lonely is actually just me getting used to being physically alone? As I stood alone in the park, I seriously felt like everyone I had ever known was there with me (sure maybe I was delirious). I felt more like I was there because of all those people and it was a CELEBRATION of that idea! It wasn't the cold feeling associated with loneliness but a warm feeling of comfort (even though I knew not a soul out there). Maybe even though we spend most of our lives physically alone, we're actually still connected to those people in our lives all the time.

Inspiration is a funny thing. Sometimes it's the smallest, seemingly inconsequential events that light the fire at our core. I haven't seen smallchou in person in years and yet he's changed the course of my fitness routine (and not even on purpose). We reflect on one another and reflect ourselves back onto the people around us. The tiniest of movements and actions influence the people around us. So keep your eyes and ears open.... this post is just one example but if we're if we're open to them, life changes may be just one small(chou) step away!