What If There Is No Finish Line?

If there is no finish line, I’m not behind. If there’s no finish line, I can trust life’s timing. If there’s no finish line, I don’t need to worry what other people think about my progress (or lack thereof). If there’s no finish line, I don’t have anything to prove. If there’s no finish line, why do I rush? If there’s no finish line, why am I working for more? If there’s no finish line, why keep showing up?

And yet, if there’s no finish line, why not go for it? Why not try something different? Why not even fail? Why not stretch into some new possibility I haven’t even considered? If there’s no finish line then who’s to say what’s possible or not possible?

This question of a finish line has been lingering in my mind. Whether in a meeting at work, on a morning run, driving to the grocery store, it’s persistence is admirable. The question that won’t go away and the one I can’t seem to fully wrap my mind around. It keeps following me, like the moon in the sky followed our car as a child, leaving me curious and also uncertain.

But there is a finish line.

Sure, there’s one big finish line at least, and yes, I’m talking about death. The one finish line none of us can escape.

And sure, there are many other finish lines: the end of each day, the moment you hit publish on a piece, graduation from high school, the finish line at a race, the finish line checking out after the weekly grocery run.

And all these finish lines mark some kind of ending, however momentary of some activity, some part of life. But getting through any one of these finish lines doesn’t necessarily bring closure or completion. High school graduation ends one chapter, but launches us into another. After the graduation parties have ended, we’re still us and still have more to do. Few feelings are worse than weekly meal planning and few better than completing the weekly grocery run. But next weekend, these groceries will be gone, requiring another round of prepping and purchasing.

And then there are the bigger cultural finish lines: getting married, buying a house, having children (or pets), getting the promotion, the raise, the bigger job, the notoriety, the network, whatever “the thing” might be for you. And all these seem to be obvious paths to get to the most elusive finish line of all: happiness. So much of the American dream or at least the way we approach happiness is based on the belief that if we just put all these steps together, we’ll one day reach that happy point. If not somewhere in the midst of all the accomplishment and striving, then surely when we retire and can finally take it easy and enjoy life.

I’m nowhere near retirement, so I can’t comment directly on that piece. But I do know how easy it is to fall into that trap (often called the hedonic treadmill) of just pursuing more and more and more. More stuff, higher salary, better car, bigger house, better connections, all in the typical keeping up with the Joneses kind of way. Except on an actual treadmill, I don’t often find myself clipping along at a speed quicker than I can manage. I don’t stumble into running a 10 miles per hour pace. But on the hedonic treadmill, that’s exactly what I do. Suddenly I’m clipping along these figurative “miles” as if I’m an Olympic marathoner.

Photo by david Griffiths on Unsplash

Even if I’m mindful, which you know, I’m trying to be through meditation and noticing my thoughts and feelings, and all the things. Even if I’m doing those things, the narrative is so strong, so compelling, and to mix metaphors a bit, the current is so strong that I get pulled along with it. The current seems to promise that elusive happiness, and it’s always just a bit further downstream, just around the river bend. Except once you’re around that bend, there seems to be just one more bend, and then another, and then another.

And even when you’ve decided you want something different or maybe similar things but in a different way, it can feel almost impossible to escape the continued drag and pull of the current.

Decide is a funny word. When is the decision point for anything? Is it the moment the thought or idea enters our mind and we first entertain it? Or, is it the moment we put that decision into action and make it real in the outside world? Is it the moment we plan to run a marathon, or the first time we head out the door for that first training run in the marathon cycle?

And what about those decisions that sit in the messy middle? The ones we somehow know within but are too scared to actualize in our lives. Those places in our lives where we’re so confident we want something else and yet, we don’t make the change. Maybe a finish line would be helpful here, more as a deadline. By _____ date, I’m going to ______.

Fill in the blanks for your own situation. Quit the job, move where I’ve always wanted, start exercising, stop drinking, declutter the basement. It’s the thing that becomes a low grade drag on your mind because part of you has moved into this new internal sense of knowing, while the rest of your internal landscape may be doing all it can not to know. Because knowing would require change, would require a shift, might change everything, and here’s the scarier part: it might change nothing.

That big finish line isn’t going anywhere and we don’t know when it will show up. Do I really want to live my life doing it this way? Or, do I want to miss out on doing my life a different way or in a different place?

They say the best writing is specific and particular and yet this piece is vaguer and more general. And I get it, dear reader, I see the fuzziness, the points where it would probably be clearer to just say the thing out loud. But even here, I feel unable. Because even though part of me is all the way there (wherever there is), the rest of me is slow to jump on board and frankly scared of the prospects of wherever that’s heading.

Because it’s uncertain, unknown, and that has often been a source of fear for me. And yet this sense, this almost knowing, this near decision hangs around. Finish line or not, it’s still here. And Brianna Wiest’s words from The Pivot Year this morning couldn’t have been more on target: “It’s here because it intends to grow you, and it won’t pass until you agree to let it stretch you past the tiny confines of a life half-lived” (Day 35).

So, I’m sitting with a new question, in light of the ultimate finish line, will I let this thing stretch me into a fully lived life? Not because anything is wrong, but because there might be more? And the truth is, I’m not sure yet. How about you?

---

If you enjoyed this post, tap the heart button and show some love so other folks can find it, or forward it to a friend. Thanks for reading.