Oh, I Figured That Out?

It’s been a few weeks now since I flew to Finland to run the Helsinki Marathon. I don’t speak Finnish beyond the basics I’d learned to feel relevant in communication and I’d never been to that part of the world before. I was catching up with a friend about the trip a couple days ago and as they said how cool it was that I’d flown to another continent to run a marathon, I had one of those moments of, “wait, I did that?” 

I knew I wanted to run a race internationally this year, but wanting and doing are not the same. So what did the “doing” look like? It looked like the early Saturday morning I spent searching international races and comparing dates to my existing travel, work, and personal life schedule. It looked like typing a dissertation for my partner to read upon waking up, choosing between a couple options for a trip. 

It looked like studying a map of Helsinki and looking at where the race began and ended. Finding the best accommodation with proximity to public transit and the race and other tourist things that were on my growing list. It looked like making sure my antichafing balm was travel size and finding a grocery store to buy my traditional pre-race meal—bagel, peanut butter, banana. It also looks like not finding bagels and trading them for some other carb, trying to purchase bananas at the checkout incorrectly, and then having airport security take my ⅓ still full jar of extra crunchy peanut butter from me before I flew home to New York.

And yet. Despite time zones and language barriers and walking way too many steps the day before and after a marathon, it looks like something I did. I learned a lot. I had a blast. I can’t wait to do it again in another city. 

I was thinking about some long term goals recently and how some of them are things I’ve never done before. Like grocery shopping in Finland but on a larger scale. It can be intimidating to try something big for the first time. 

But don’t I have a track record of figuring it all out?

When my friends and I started the first youth lead team in the history of our town’s Relay for Life event, didn’t we have a lot to learn? As a teenager, when I decided to walk 50 miles straight one year across the 24 hour event, didn’t I have no real idea what I was doing?

And yet. Didn’t we become a wildly successful team raising thousands of dollars for the American Cancer Society and inspiring future youth teams in our community? Oh certainly there were times when I felt like I was in over my head. But did I not learn from every step in the process? Am I not a better version of myself through the experience?

When I was 24, I quit my job and spent 2 full months traveling around the United States with my best friend in the name of kindness. We called it the Smile Project Road Trip and—through 28 states and fueled by 72 combined slices of pizza—we worked with over 30 organizations, mapping out a hypothesis that people want to take care of each other and that human connection is everywhere. 

I’d never done anything that big before. Never had to connect so many dots and orchestrate so much between two people who were also on the road every night. It was simultaneously messy and beautiful. Exhausting and invigorating. And even though so much was figured out from the passenger seat of a rental car, it was figured out, wasn’t it?

And isn’t that the point? To try things that push us. To be unafraid to fail. To know that there will come a moment when you are crying in Alabama after falling asleep in Georgia and missing the quintessential roadside Georgia peach because you are still exhausted and you have 3 more nonprofits to call and one campsite to book for that night’s accommodations and you are crankier than you want to be but… 

But then you figure it out. And when you pitch the tent in the campsite to the chant of katydids and crickets it will be the hottest place you’ve ever slept. But it will be another thing you’ve figured out.

And when you decide to walk for 24-straight hours at Relay for Life, at some point in the middle of the night you will want to sit down. And a friend will walk beside you and tell you not to quit. And in those darkest and most silent hours, you will figure out how important the right relationships are.

And when the cashier at the Finnish grocery store tells you that you need a sticker to buy your bananas and you feel yourself get flustered as the line grows behind you and you need to run back to the produce section and weigh your bananas and use a screen that is only in Finnish but you hadn’t learned your fruit yet and so you click on the wrong bananas and rush back to the front and you feel a little embarrassed but it is okay and he hands you your bananas and your receipt and… And that too will be something you’ve figured out. 

And so if I’ve figured out how a bunch of 15-year-olds could raise thousands of dollars for charity and I’ve figured out how to plan a cross country trip so exciting it gets a live segment on the biggest news station in Los Angeles and I’ve figured out how to organize a 9 day trip to 3 countries with a marathon squeezed in the middle, perhaps I can figure this out too. 

Oh surely I have evidence of things not working out. But surely it is more exciting to be reminded of when it did. When the clock hit 10:00 AM and I finished my walk. When 12,896 miles later, the rental car was returned. When I stood on the starting line listening to a countdown in Finnish.

May this be your reminder. The next time you start something new. The next time you step out of your comfort zone. The next time you wonder if you can. Go back in your brain a bit. Find a moment where you have. And let that serve as all the evidence you need to know that you are exactly the right person for this. 

You have a track record of figuring things out.

You’ll figure this out too.