Wake up after a restful sleep, get your "running suit" on, get out of the house.
It's 6AM.
The weather is quite cool, exactly the way you want it to be. There is only a few people driving on the street. The air is fresh, and you tell yourself, this is going to be a good day.
You started a little bit later than normal, so when you walk to the bridge, there have been quite lots of people jogging.
And you become one of them.
It starts with little steps. You put one foot in front of the other. And then faster. And faster. You tell yourself okay I will just run until I get tired. You focus on your step, make sure that your toes hit the ground before your heal does. You focus on your technics so much that, when you realize, you are now at the middle of the bridge.
You stand there, let the sun warm up your face and body. While absorbing its energy, you look at the river below. You think about climate change, littering, and nature. And then, you catch your thought back, wonder if you should continue and run on the other half of the bridge, which you had never done before, or if you should just walk home as you always did.
You decided to give it a try.
Getting down on a new road always seems to be hard at first. You take small steps with fear. How could the end of the bridge seem so far? You didn't notice the bridge was this long. And this sloping. You tell yourself not to be overdramatic. You know you can make it and you will do it today! You have enough energy, you just scared of the unknown, of the inconvenient you hadn't experienced.
You walk normally, feeling a little bit itchy on your feet. Urg, mosquito! It is at the middle of your new journey now and you think, maybe I should just go home. No one will know. The mosquito makes me so uncomfortable. Then you think of the lessons you have had in life about not giving up. You remind yourself who you want to become, that you are not a quitter. What if the candidates of a running competition decided to only run half of the race and then went home? What if the first space rocket just launched for 99% and then stopped? You realize that 50% or 99% or even 99.99% is still not enough. Incomplete is incomplete. You need that damn 100%, or even 110%, or even 200%. No! You just cannot give up once you started it!
And you get out of the thought in your head, back to the reality, back to the bridge. Then you realize that you are, actually, just a few step away from its end.
Suddenly, you regret. You didn't enjoy the journey and didn't even try your best to run! But you know you always have a chance to try it again. You hit the final steps, and turn back.
Once you have experienced the road, it becomes much easier. You feel like you know the exact goal, what technics you want to try, the drib of the bridge. You have conquered it and you surely can do it better now! This time, you also start with small steps, slowly first, give yourself a space to breath. You enjoy the wind, the sunlight. You notice the little wild white flowers growing nearby the bridge. You see the city opening its eyes and waking up.
And you walk faster. Focus on your steps. And run. Hey, you are again at the middle of the bridge now. How comes it this fast comparing to what you have experienced before? Same road. Different directions. Different thoughts. Different experiences.
And as you walk down the bridge to get home, you think about life. All of the ups and downs. All of the difficult and easy parts. You think about nature, your feeling, your spirit, your mental and physical health. You think about the run. Sometimes you go with friends, sometimes alone. Only you define who you are, and what will be your target that day. And maybe that's how life works. We get through a bunch of good and bad experiences just to define who we are, and to choose our life mission.
So, once you get home, you know you will clearly run that bridge again tomorrow.