This morning, I had an awful run. I knew it from about a minute in. I never found a good breathing rhythm and it just felt difficult. To add to it, when I ran on Thursday evening in the neighborhood around my daughter’s soccer practice, I passed three snakes. Which I was not okay with. There was a 99% chance they were harmless bull snakes, but I wasn’t discounting that they could be rattle snakes. Running could literally kill me.
This morning, I was running a usual route, but by the time I had crossed through the local park and was running up the hill that would take me home, I had to literally stop, put my hands on my thighs and wheeze. Had I passed someone in the same condition, I’d have probably felt it in violation of my Girl Scout first aid training to pass by. Luckily, no one did pass by. Add to it that every stick and leaf resembled a snake… In the end, my run was a little faster than usual, perhaps because I was just so anxious to get home before I embarrassed myself. It’s fine, I was thinking in those final minutes; I’m running at altitude. Me and Kara Goucher. I could totally rock a run at sea level. Stretching out at home, however, I still felt heavy chested, like I wasn’t getting quite enough air. “It’s allergy season, you’re probably a little congested,” my husband said. “You’re stressed out; you haven’t been sleeping well. You’re tired.”
As a practiced and practicing hypochondriac, though, I knew better than to accept such pedestrian explanations, and so I Googled “heart attack symptoms in women” immediately. “Are you serious?” asked my husband, as I took the heart attack risk factor quiz. The American Heart Association thinks I have a 1% chance of a heart attack. “Right,” said husband. “Physically, you’re perfectly healthy.” He’s a patient, loving man.
And so, like the stick, like the curling dried leaf pod on the sidewalk, is not a snake (99%), my wheezing run during allergy season, up a decent hill, is not a heart attack (99%). Hypochondria aside, how many times have we, with wi-fi at our fingertips, Googled something out of fear? That ridiculously giant, hairy spider in the garage. Bee stings. Radon. Donald Trump poll standings. Sometimes we research to assure ourselves of our own reasonable logic, and sometimes because we honestly would rather rely on a crowd-sourced Wikipedia article than ask a professional to answer what we might not want to know. And yet, how often is the stick a snake? Sure, the possiblity shouldn’t be discounted. There’s an evolutionary reason that we don’t seek snakes out, and I’m happy to comply. But most often, the stick is a stick.
I can’t say how much time I’ve spent on worry. It’s both more and less than it used to be. I’ve learned, for the most part, how to recognize when I go down a rabbit hole. Okay, so I took the American Heart Association quiz. But then I (pretty much) moved on. Reassured in my own logic. I took a class on anxiety a few years ago, and one thing the leader recommended was looking at the very worst case scenario of our fear, and realizing we could probably live with it. At the time, of course, I thought, that’s horrible advice. The worst case scenario? Death, apocalyptic chaos! But eventually, as you work through fears, you realize that death and apocalyptic chaos are pretty unlikely. Which brings us to pragmatic fears. Should I let my child ride her bike on the neighborhood streets? Will that helmet protect her? Do we have enough in savings to cover a medical emergency? A job loss? Will I be here to see all my children’s milestones? Their childrens’? These fears don’t send me to Google. They’re a different type. But they do encourage me, every day, to do better. Just a little better. To run even on mornings that feel heavy, to have a salad, to really listen when my child tells me a long and convoluted story about recess when I really just want to read, uninterrupted.
Fear can motivate, for sure. And surprise us into running a little faster; we can use it, channel it, to live a little deeper day by day… so that in that 1% when it really is a snake, we’re not paralyzed, but ready.
But to be clear, if it is a snake, not cool.
Example: Not a snake.