I happened to watch the television show “How I Met Your Mother” the other night (10/4) while working out in my basement. The character Ted, at the end, is giving a lecture to his college class about the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain (one of my all time favorite cities, by the way). The Sagrada Familia is an unfinished church in Barcelona by Antonio Gaudí that remains such as he was hit and killed by a tram leaving the work site of the church. As Ted is speaking about the church he says that it usually isn’t being hit by a bus that keeps something from being completed but that, “Most of the time it’s too difficult, too expensive, too scary. It’s only once you’ve stopped that you realize how hard it is to start again. So you force yourself not to want it. But it’s always there. And until you finish it, it will always be…” And he never finishes his sentence as he is runs out of class to take care of something he left unfinished but of course the missing word is “unfinished”.
I actually have lots of unfinished stuff right now. My house is half clean; my office is partially organized; half of the clean clothes in the laundry basket still need to be put away; I have a few blog entries to wrap up – you get the picture. We all have “stuff” that we don’t finish or that sort of stays in constant state of needing some kind of attention. At least I do. There is always a dirty dish, something that needs cleaning or straightening, words that need to be written, people who need to be called. I do my best, however, to make sure what goes unfinished is not of major consequence; that all the important stuff gets done. That is not always the case and we don’t always see or get what is the most important. Or maybe we do but we just talk ourselves into believing that it doesn’t matter or it isn’t as important as we thought or we conveniently immerse ourselves in our busy lives. What this often leads to, however, is regret.
Now, it is not always possible to get from point A to point B in a straight line. I’d say much of the time it’s not. No matter how much we plan or how organized, focused and determined we are, things happen that throw us off that obstacle-free path peppering it with, well, obstacles. We vow to lose a certain amount of weight and stop short of our goal. We vow to exercise more regularly but succeed in only logging sporadic visits to the gym. We vow to be a better friend, reach out more to family, volunteer in our communities, take a class of some sort, learn to do something new, find a new job, travel more or to some specific locale…the list goes on and on of what might be unfinished in our lives. The reasons for our stopping short of our goals are varied and many. Sometimes putting something on hold or taking another path makes sense or there was not other option but often I think we are just taking the easy way out.
I believe that most of us diverge from or redraw the paths we have plotted in our minds at some point in time. It’s inevitable – marriages, children, divorces, and many other significant events occur that alter our courses. It is therefore understandable that we take some boiling pots and put them on the back burner for a while. But sometimes we leave them there too long, until the sizzle is gone or until we have forgotten what we were even cooking to begin with. Sometimes this is okay. Life changes and with that comes changes to our goals. We grow, we learn, we discover. One interest frequently supplants another. But something we should never do is forget about the stuff we really wanted to do or the stuff that was and is still important to us. The only people, though, who can really tell us if we have unfinished business is ourselves. We have to look in the mirror and ask if we like what we see. We have to have talks with ourselves and ask if we like what we hear. We have to look around and ask if we think we are where we belong, if something or someone is missing. It is then that we will know whether or not we have anything left to finish.
Back in the 9th grade (a very long time ago) at a track meet my coach put me in the fast heat of the 100 meter hurdles. I did not welcome this challenge. I had become very comfortable winning the slow heats and in this particular meet it would be the fastest of the fast heats we’d run against that year. I was horrified to be running against four seniors, three of whom had track scholarships lined up, one of whom was also headed to compete in the Olympic Trials. And then there was me. I had only recently mastered taking just three steps in between each hurdle when my coach threw me into this situation. She told me I needed to be pushed. I was stagnating competing against slower runners. I was not happy but I had no choice. It started off well. We were all even for a couple of hurdles and with three hurdles left in the race I was tied with one of the scholarship girls, beating my non-scholarship teammate (who I had never bested before) and not quite a hurdle behind the other two. But my three steps were a bit of a struggle as I went to go over the second to last hurdle and my trail leg clipped the hurdle. I went down hard. My knees and hands took the brunt of the fall which kept my face from hitting the pavement – the only thing I was thankful for at that moment. I really don’t know what happened – clipping my trail leg shouldn’t have caused me to wipe out like that, but wipe out I did. All I remember thinking as I was lying there was how I didn’t want to get up. Ever. If winter had arrived just then and covered me completely with snow I would have been thrilled. Did it feel too difficult to get up? Yes. Too scary? Yes. Too lots of things. But then I heard my coach screaming at me to “GET UP, GET UP, GET UP.” So I got up, stood there for a second (painfully aware of the silence and everyone’s eyes on me) and heard her scream “FINISH” which immediately became the worst F-word I had ever heard. But she was my coach so I very gracelessly loped over the last hurdle to cross the finish line in what would be my worst ever time in that race albeit my most memorable. Blood was running down my leg from the scrape on my knee, tiny pieces of asphalt were sticking to my hands, legs and uniform and the lump in my throat was growing larger by the second as I did everything in my power to suppress my urge to cry – not because I was hurt but because I had, in my mind, failed miserably and very publicly. I felt like I had let my coach down, that I proved to her only that I couldn’t compete against the faster girls. As my coach quickly looked at my knee and picked a few pieces of asphalt out of my hands, I said, “Are you mad at me because I fell” and she said “No, you were doing great, better than I expected” and I said “But I fell. And I’ve never heard you yell at me like that” and she said “I wanted you to get up and finish the race. You always finish the race if you can. Always. And I knew you could so I was yelling at you to get up. You must finish.” I said “Oh,” satisfied that she wasn’t angry with me, then started to walk off the track to go clean up before my next race. But she caught me by the upper arm and said, “Where are you going? Go run your lap.” and I said “But I’m bleeding” and she said “We’ll clean you up after you run” and as she gave me an encouraging slap on the back (and believe me, I wanted to slap her back). She said “Finish. You aren’t done until you run that lap. Your teammates waited for you. Go.” I used to think that I never forgot that story because it was a horrifying – if not the most horrifying moment – on the track but I don’t think that is the case. I don’t just remember the fall and how that made me feel – I remember everything she said to me about finishing the race, about finishing what you start. I’ve told that story to my kids when they’ve wanted to quit something or not try something because it was too hard or might be difficult or embarrassing or otherwise not ideal. In the end I was glad I finished that race. It might have been the worst time I ever got but it was also the biggest ovation I ever got. Getting up was a bigger accomplishment than winning. And I guess that makes sense. I did, in fact, learn way more from losing that race than I did from any of the ones that I would later win – I had hadn’t failed miserably as I thought I had, I finished the race and that itself made it a success.—AMB
What have you left unfinished? How do you think it will make you feel if you finish what you started or reach the goal you set? What can you or will you do to tie up those loose ends, reach that goal you set but have yet to achieve or finish what you started?