A Long Walk To Explore

After a long day, you feel exhausted. And probably there isn’t something new to be found. But what if, you explore something new about yourself.

A simple experiment to challenge yourself – nothing to lose. But so much to gain. Let’s explore.

Swimming Alone

Swimming is an awesome exercise. When you learn to swim at 25 years of age, you fall in love with that.

Exercising is good but often you will sweat and with each rep, it will feel like too much stress. But with swimming, you don’t feel the sweat. And each rep is fun because you are swimming and it is a fun activity in general.

So it is a good thing to do every day with your buddies. But what if someone doesn’t show up…?

The first instinct is to not go because your friend didn’t show up. But that will only hinder your progress.

The alternative is to go regardless. That way, you will form a discipline and your swimming to improve. Bonus, you will not spiral into not doing swimming by extending your laziness. So you persisted and went for the swim – did a few rounds extra. And when you came out of the pool to get going home, you felt a little exhausted.

Thinking About Marathon

But then the thought of marathon came. It is such an intense thing to run for 42 kilometers. And often it ain’t about the time, most people are running it to complete it.

It would be amazing to run the marathon just even once. But the training and physicality required will be immense.

As this thought crossed the mind, an idea popped in your mind. How about walking all the way to the home, not taking any vehicle…? The distance was 11 kilometers. And the fact that you are exhausted with a bag to carry, it seemed like an impossible journey.

However, you didn’t let this stop you. Music has immense power. It can make you feel happy, sad or lost. Hence, a good playlist for every emotion is a must.

You popped in your earphone and started the rocking music to inspire you. One step at a time and you started your journey of 11 kilometers.

Your brain is a mystery. The moment you started the journey, all the possible obstacles started to appear as if you can’t do this. It is a mental block, so you ignored them and decided to persist.

Walking To See The Limit

In contrast to the 42 kilometers run, walking 11 km should be a mere cakewalk. But for you, it is a challenge because you don’t walk 10 km in total all day.

So 11 km continuously is a challenge. But this was a good opportunity to test your limit.

Yes, having a bag made the matter worse. But the momentum was high now. And if you backed out now, you will do the same next time. Before you know, this activity will be sidelined.

After about 4 km, you started to feel your legs sore. But you could see the vehicles flying by, shops and people whom you would have never see. Nature presents itself in a beautiful manner. Suddenly, you appreciate things more seeing from a new perspective.

There do come self-doubt of whether you would quit or your body would shut down.

That would be embarrassing. But you could afford that because you are in a city and any time you feel like you have reached a threshold, you could book a taxi home.

So you kept waking faster, slower and sometimes ignoring everything around. Sometimes you paused and started seeing the surrounding. And it was tempting to call it a quit – the easy choice. But you won’t know better things, get to know yourself better unless you challenge yourself.

The Bus Stopping With Empty Seats

After about 8 km, you stopped for a while at a bus stop. You didn’t intend to take the bus. But the next bus came and for the first time in your lifetime, it is empty. And it halted at the stop for more than 1 minute – a rarity of rare.

All this happened when you decided to walk home. Sure, there exists a devil who doesn’t want you to succeed.

Suddenly, the restaurant started throwing in smells of freshly made foods. It was as if all the world is conspiring to make you stop.

In reality, you were tired and your brain was tricking you to stop without making you feel guilty.

But your willpower is stronger than the distractions. So you started pacing up. And you started to get visibly tired. The legs are paining like hell. Of course, you won’t crash any moment – but it is the worst sensation ever.

This is the reason for doing something extreme without any training. Doing something slowly in progression helps.

But this isn’t a training program, it is to see if you could do it. And yes, you did it. It took more than 2 hours for you to reach the home. However, you felt good about it.

Pain And Warm Water

A quick mental calculation and you could know that you can probably run for about 20 km in 2 hours. And maybe run for 42 km in 4 hours. But running isn’t like walking – so you need to add 1 hour of halt time in between.

So you get happy about this mental marathon you ran. But this happiness was short lived.

Because as soon as you stopped at home, the pain in your legs started to grow. And it won’t subside.

So you started heating the water. Which just isn’t a universal solvent, it is also a natural remedy-giver. You then took a hot shower. And then put some salt in another tub of water and put your legs in it. And kept at it while you laid on the sofa.

And it felt awesome. It was an experience to challenge yourself to walk an extra distance.

The best thing is the realization that you can stretch yourself and do more. Go and try something new. Maybe you fail but maybe you find something new about yourself.