It occurred to me that, sometimes, the most significant of barriers aren’t even really there.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about goal-setting; I won’t bore you with a recap –> if you are interested, it’s a two-parter, available here and here.

It occurred to me after I wrote that post that I was going to need a new goal for my running routine, so I am planning on running a half-marathon before the end of the year.

Which is more than double the length of my PB (personal best).

Which is scary.

But, if you’d told me at the beginning of the year that I was going to run a 10K this year –multiple times, actually– I would have been afraid of what that was going to be like, all the way back then.

Just like I’m afraid, now, of the goal that now lies in front of me.

But I think I’ve discovered something: the barriers that we believe are in our way, a lot of the time, aren’t even really there. We might imagine them being there, but that’s not the same thing as them actually being there.

* * *

Do you know what a Socratic square is? It’s a large square consisting of four smaller squares, of equal size. The diagram can be used to illustrate situations in which two different variables, each with two  possible conditional states, can produce multiple outcomes. Let’s apply the Socratic square to the concept of barriers, for a moment.

A barrier can serve two purposes: it can serve to confine and it can serve to protect. In the event that a barrier protects us from what’s outside, we are happy to have it. In the event that a barrier confines us, limiting our freedom, we are usually opposed, inasmuch as we tend to like to be free. However, we can –although it would be abnormal– choose to hate the barrier that protects us, just as we can also, atypically, choose to love the barrier that confines us. Each of these four outcomes –> 1) love to be confined, 2) hate to be confined, 3) love to be protected, and 4) hate to be protected, results from the two conditional states that we can have about a wall, and the two conditional states pertaining to whether the wall is protecting us or protecting others from us.

I saw a recent political ad that juxtaposed our President’s plans to build a wall, at the beginning of his presidency, with the fact that the majority of the free world has restricted travel to their countries from the United States, in light of the current COVID-19 crisis and America’s continuing problems with the pandemic.

Without making any further political statements on the matter, this political ad made me realize that barriers can be viewed in a positive light, or in a negative light, depending on which side of the barrier you find yourself, and depending on whether or not you are okay with being protected or being confined.

It reminds me of a sci-fi book that I read, years ago, by one of my favorite sci-fi authors, Greg Egan. The book was called Quarantine, and it tells the story of Earth, in the future, surrounded by an impenetrable wall that has been placed around us for reasons unknown. The barrier, its source, and its effects on the people of Earth –leading to an interesting mental disease called Bubble Fever– are the subject of the book. As much as I remember it, I enjoyed the book thoroughly.

* * *

I think that the barriers, that hamper me most often, are the excuses that I use.

This blog post concept came to me this morning during a run. It wasn’t a particularly difficult distance to run, but I still struggled because I was telling myself, in my head, that it was okay for me to be stopping to catch my breath because of the humidity, because it was hard to breathe, because the weather was not cooperating. And, you might think, “Sure, those reasons sound like legitimate reasons for having to stop during a run.”

But, the thing is, I’ve run in higher humidity than I faced this morning. I ran in Texas, a few weeks back, when the humidity was 90% and the temperatures were in the low 80s at 7:00 a.m. By comparison, my run this morning was not so tough, as to warrant me stopping six times in four miles. But I did, because I had already legitimized the excuses in my mind.

Maybe the formula is more complicated than I realize.

Maybe it’s not just, “low humidity, run non-stop; high humidity, can’t go straight through.” Who knows how many variables are involved in that eventual decision that I make to stop, for just a few seconds?

When I know, in advance, that I am going to use an excuse to explain my sub-par performances, then it’s pretty much over but the crying afterward (metaphorical crying, not real crying). The funny thing about the quitting that I do, when I am properly armed with just the right excuse, is that I’ve had four or six or ten runs in a row where I never stopped during any of those runs, and then I start to think to myself, “Man, I am glad that I am done with that stupid ‘quitting when it gets tough’ garbage.” But, then, I quit during a subsequent run, maybe just once or twice, and then I’m defeated; sure to follow is a decent string of runs where I can’t seem to do the whole thing straight no matter what I do.

I guess there’s always going to be something in the way, some barrier or some set of circumstances that I decide to use as an excuse. Every time I chose the excuses over the work that I have to do to keep going, I am choosing to believe a lie –> that I can’t do what I know that I can do. It’s during those moments, when I’ve decided that I cannot, that the struggle is over and I’ve lost the battle.

Bottom line: you can’t do what you don’t believe you can do.

Here’s to me, doing a better job at pushing through the barriers in my mind, next time.