One At A Time

"How do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time"
-Quoted by some guy clearly not aware about the concept of binge eating


The above line is something I picked up while reading Mark Owen's  "No Easy Day". The story about the SEAL team that went on the mission to Abbottabad (and makes me think twice before ordering pizza at night).
The line however which the protagonist says pushed him was something that stuck with me. No not because it is an elephant. Well kinda. It is because those small words carry some big meaning. Of course those words at first go did not make much impact. Like most things we read, or hear or experience, their relevance got highlighted only when I found myself in a position to appreciate their depth. For a better part of my life, my athletic achievements have been limited to retrieving the TV remote from one room within an hour or reaching across the bed for it, and while my physical prowess is spoken with awe among sloths, among the social animals such as ourselves it is more at a value mathematicians would like to denote to be just a scrap above zero.

Will shortly be arriving.

However, in my final year there was just a push that sort of motivated me to probably cross the threshold of exertion to the limit that you can at least beat a spider trying to make a web around you. So I set out to battle my first foe, running. It has been chronicled by great many a minstrels that there was a mother who wanted her son to run, but the son preferred to watch Pokemon and that's why his tryouts for the Olympics were undone. 

Ain't no one taking me away from Kanto.

                 

Basically my years of being a politician about running around came back to bite me (yeah they ran their bit) and I finally had to push myself to at least not collapse into a human puddle. Or like collapse either. I'll spare you the details of that, but it was during one run on a particularly trying day that those words about consuming an Elephant struck me. Every step I was taking, every millimeter I moved ahead, every panting breath, gasping for oxygen (or like the light at the end of the tunnel) was one step more than what I had previously done. Every movement ahead while barely a dent was in fact a movement ahead,  and that pushed me. Every run henceforth, every length of the pool, every  skip, every extra sweet dish at Barbecue Nation, encouraged me. Just one more, just one ahead. just take the large challenge  and break it down into small pieces, till the waiters at an all you can eat buffet look at you like the physical incarnation of world hunger.         

What happened ultimately was that the run wasn't about how far I ran the race, it was about HOW I ran the race. Whether I ran it like a chore, or if I ran it as a battle. If I ran it as a compulsion or I ran it as a challenge. If I ran it, convinced that I'd have a better chance of completing the circuit if I flew or if I decided to cut the self expensed  humour and actually do something I had aimed for and that made all the difference. 

That year, those month of running imparted me the wisdom which I think actually pushed me into adulthood. Don't get me wrong, I am still in denial about maturity, but I actually feel that achieving anything isn't about conquering the thing you target. It is about conquering that part in yourself that thinks it can't. It is about shutting down your opposition. It is about taking that huge trek and breaking it down smaller and smaller till every step and breath is charging you towards your goal. 

I took that lesson with me, for this last year that I spent betwixt and between. Correction, that I continue to spend betwixt and between a lot. Aims, aspirations, cuisines etc etc. Every mammoth task that befell me at work, or every change that had to be induced was done one twirl and spin at a time.All I had to do was ensure that I did my small bit towards myself and just maintained that flow. 

While that book might've not been the pinnacle of literary achievements, or my running around been the peak of human fitness, that phase, that mindset gave me a bigger and better gift just short of the best one (life) I ever got. It taught me the best way to deal with it. To deal with life.Simply, one bite at a time.