Well, I reached the halfway point. I have been on the Race for five and a half months now. I have been away from my home, my family, my friends, my job, my church, my car, and all of the things I know. Some days it feels like I’ve been gone a week and others like I’ve been gone a decade. I have been through a lot in the last few months and I’ve seen and experienced so much, but it’s nothing like I ever imagined when I first decided to do this thing back in September 2013.
I thought it would be a wild adventure. I thought it would be an exciting experience. I thought I would be awed by new and amazing things everyday and I would have stories to go home with and tell my family and friends and eventually my kids and grandchildren someday.
It’s funny how people can tell you something over and over again and you think you understand them, but it’s not until you actually experience it for yourself that you really get it. I had heard a thousand times from people who did the race before that it is something that you can’t go into with any expectations. I went through a week of training camp with alumni squad leaders and directors of AIM who spent years in the field and parents who had kids who did the race. They spent day after day trying to explain what the race was like for them, but also trying to make clear that there was nothing about the race that could be replicated. Every race is different for every person. There’s no format or program that can be set for a person to formulate a certain experience. I heard this and it sounded like common sense to me, but I didn’t fully understand it.
Now 5 ½ months down the road, I am disappointed with my self for not taking all of it to heart. I waited around for the race to do something to me, for me, through me. I was waiting for it to be what I expected it to be; even though I told myself I had no expectations. I didn’t make it my own.
This is not a world race anomaly. This is standard day after day, year after year practice for me and I’m sure many of you too. I see something someone else is doing, something big and great. And I see it as something so uniquely wonderful and I think that if only I was part of that, my life would have more meaning, more thrill. But then I do it and it’s not what I thought so I decide that I need to keep looking for the next bigger and better thing that will change my life. Why is that? Why are we such creatures of habit that we can’t see that what we’re doing isn’t working? Why do we always think the grass is greener on the other side, yet when we get there we do the same thing we did on the old grass? Why does it take us so long to figure out that the grass isn’t going to be green unless WE water it?
I don’t know if I’m making any sense to any of you or if I’m just talking to myself here, but I want to learn how to water my own little square of grass right where I’m at every day. Whether I’m at home in Oakland, California or across the globe in Zambia, Africa. I don’t want to wait around for things to get better; I want to make them better.
These past 5 ½ months feel like a blur of wasted time. It’s not that I haven’t been doing what I came out here to do. But I haven’t been doing it to the fullest that I want to be doing it. I have been teaching and playing with orphans, but I haven’t been allowing myself to love them fully. I have been meeting and talking to homeless and hungry people but I haven’t been really looking into their eyes and getting to know their stories. I have been living in community with some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met who share my dreams and passions, but I haven’t been investing in my relationships with them. I have been traveling the world, but I haven’t been experiencing all that it has to offer.
The problem is that I’ve been too busy focusing on the here and now of my discomfort at the same time as the tomorrow and next Tuesday of my hopes and dreams. I want to live like I believe that God will do something big in this moment I’m in right now wherever I am and whomever I’m with. I want to do all the things I dream of doing instead of just dreaming of doing them.
At the beginning of the race, they tell you that the race is what you make it and that is so true, but the truer statement is that life is what you make it. And that might not be a great revelation to you and you might be thinking, “Kaycie, yah duh, you’re not telling us something new.” But while I’ve heard this my whole life, I’ve never lived it and I haven’t seen very many people living it either, so it leads me to think that there are a lot of people walking around in the world who need to bring this simple truth from their heads to their hearts and start living like they believe it. We have to stop dreaming about it and start being about it.
I made it halfway and even if this is all I’ve learned so far, I think it was well worth my time and money because I’m pretty sure it’s going to change my life. I have another 5 ½ months left until I move on to the next thing and I‘m not wishing the time away because I think there’s something better coming along. I am happy with my here and now.
