[Note: I started this post back in February. Evidently it wasn’t ready for use until now.]
If you’ve heard the story of the brick layer and the cathedral, it’s a great story. Here’s my own personal rendition of it:
Imagine you come across three men working. You walk up to the first one and ask him what he’s doing.
“I’m laying brick,” he says.
You walk over to the second and ask him what he’s doing. He says, “I’m not just laying brick. I’m building a building.”
You walk over to the third and ask him what he’s doing. His response: “I’m not just putting up a building, I’m building a cathedral.”
I love this story. It is all about context. What is the context for what you are doing in your life? Are you going through the motions, doing busy work, laying brick? Are you building something masterful and sacred, like a your own personal Cathedral of Happiness?
I know which one I’m doing. I’m building my own Cathedral of Happiness, baby! That means that my preferences are sacred, and I must honor them. I have an agenda, and I must follow it.
Back in February, I connected the dots with this analogy in relation to my running life. I found myself in an unsatisfying rut. I was pushing myself to run the miles. I was tracking every run (as I had done for years). The idea of a “Big Race” (aka marathon) loomed forever in the back of my mind.
The routine had become a well-established habit, but it wasn’t making me happy.
Consider, for example, all the tracking I was doing. I usually love tracking things: books I’ve read, money I’ve earned, miles I’ve run. Yet tracking is a tool. Ideally it serves a bigger purpose. It is like brick-laying. Sure, brick-laying matters, but the bigger perspective is the Cathedral. Running those miles, tracking those miles. These can be valuable, yet in the big picture, I think my satisfaction and overall happiness needs to come first.
Am I right?
I mean, my happiness is sacred. It’s not just “a choice.” This is my life we are talking about. Every choice I make is part of building my cathedral. Or, at least, it can be. As such, it’s important that it actually work towards my preferences, and my agenda for my life.
Once I realized that, in my running life, I had been doing a lot brick-laying rather than building my Cathedral, I asked myself, what would serve my happiness? Take a break, came the answer. I listened. At first it was a two-month running break. That became a six month break. Meanwhile, I continued exercising and had a dandy time.
In the last two months I have started doing some running again. It’s been fun to get back into it, but I keep close tabs on how it’s going. I am mindful of avoiding past pitfalls. This is too important to overlook.
After all, I am building a Cathedral.