Blessed nerves.
The world will most likely keep turning next Monday, July 5. Yes, I know it will. The dollar will surely be more expensive or cheaper, and who knows if some tiny virus will turn our house upside down or what law Congress will approve or sink.
I know that there are some very important things in life. Like health is the most valuable thing, or that we have to work, or that we have to start thinking about who to vote for in 2022, or why our ex-partner left us, or what pants go with that shirt. But I, and perhaps some of you, are nervous because there is a triathlon competition this weekend. Yes, our world, which will continue to turn with everything in it, has that activity inside it, and with it, our hearts, tensions, dreams, anxieties and pockets.
Life, without these passions, is nothing more than mere survival. That is why we have chosen to be anxious for that swim, wanting to give it our all on the bike and waiting to see what our legs will have to offer in athletics. The universe of hundreds of amateur athletes is living the prelude, analyzing strategies, calculating intakes, dreaming of medals or waiting for the moment to cross the line that separates them from a hug from their most beloved people.
In my case, I count on not sleeping the night before, some stomach upset, I become distracted and my pulse is altered. And yes, the world keeps moving with its complexities, accounts, problems and dramas. But mine, ours, revolves around the fact that there is competition. I am going to reach a goal that I worked for months, a body of water for which I prepared for endless hours within that blue rectangle of 25 meters, a road for which I got up early more than once or many times on two wheels and streets for which I first walked many times for meters and meters to see how fast I could go with my two legs.
How wonderful it is to exist to feel these nerves! This self-inflicted but necessary tension to value what we have in front of us. These tremors are the fuel that the fire needs so that at the starting signal all the senses are ready to give everything, to forget that outside that track there is a piece of boring life and that this one, the one we are feeling in the competition, is the intense and fun life that we have decided to live.
If anyone is like me and has seen Rocky, you will know what I am talking about when you read that “ Fear is like a fire. It burns you from the inside. If you control it, you get warm. But if it gets to you, it will burn you and everything around you.” And if you haven’t seen Rocky, stop reading immediately and go watch that movie and let yourself get excited knowing that there is competition on the calendar, that you will meet friends and acquaintances, that you will want to pass more than one person and that you will sleep very little the night before, as if it were something important, something so big that the world, your world, had to stop for a couple of hours in an episode of suffering, sweat and a lot of happiness.
Blessed are the moments that cause us these nerves.
Cristian Marín-Alternating Current.