Love/Hate

Have you seen any New Balance shoe commercials lately? I have DVR and therefore don't watch many commercials, but I love their new campaign. They tackle a topic that is close to my heart, and bring up an obvious but necessary point: the balance between love and hate when it comes to running. Here's the voiceover from my favorite:

"You are in a relationship with running. A love/hate relationship. Running kicks you out of a warm, soft bed and into a cold, hard world. Running calls you at all hours of the night. Running gets up at the crack of dawn, and keeps you at practice long after play has left the building. Every day with running is a question of your commitment, and running is not afraid to ask. Yes, my friend, it is a complex and torrid affair. It is a constant balance, a balance between joy and pain, work and play, a balance between love and hate."

Great advertising like this one gets me to thinking, and not just about running. It makes me think about all the things in our lives that we have love/hate relationships with. The idea of a hating and loving something at the same time is an overriding theme in many facets of life: work, owning a home, a dog or even having children. You love what you get out of these things, the fulfillment it brings you to establish relationships, feel loved and gain a sense of accomplishment. But, there are the times when these things may feel like burdens or as though they're holding you back from something. Doubt creeps in when you think of all the things you are "missing out on" because of your decisions. You begin to question your choices or feel buyer's remorse when things start to get hard or painful. Did you make the right choice? Is now the right time? How will I know?

Truth is, there will always be a downside to everything we do. There will always be moments of doubt, times of pain and even struggles through uncertainty. This doesn't make it wrong, it makes it worth it. Without the work, the results just aren't the same. Nothing worth having ever comes without hard work. Nothing. Don't question yourself until it's all over, when you've forgotten how painful or hard it was and can see how far you've come with the fresh eyes of experience.

One of my favorite lines, especially at work, is, "Hindsight is always 20/20." You can always look back at what you've done and find faults, times when you could've tried harder, pushed yourself and done it right. But without that experience and near-failure, where would you be? More importantly, take a look at that end result and ask, was it worth it?

Well, was it?

P.S. After using an entire bottle of a carpet cleaner called "Kids and Pets Heavy-Duty" there is still a large stain on the carpet in one of our bedrooms from our little angel, Rudi. Oh, and those baby bunnies died last week and I picked them up with gloved hands and laid them to rest (threw them) in the field behind our house. My sheer lack of regard for this loss makes me question my passing over into the darkside of people who live in the country and are at one with the "circle of life." And in case you're wondering, yes, Rudi is worth it. :0)