If you are feeling a little lost, like you stumbled into a place and you’re not quite sure you should be there, I think probably one of two things is true.
A: You are really lost, and need to pray very hard that something or someone will help you find your way.
B: Maybe you’re just at the halfway point. The halfway point refers to that point in a race, in any kind of race, but for argument’s sake let’s call it a 20km race, when you cannot see the finish line, have no idea how far out you are, but can tell from the aching in your limbs that you are too far away from the starting point to go back.
Usually in life there is nothing to go back to. For sure there was a point when you could have deserted the path you had put yourself on, and gone another way, but that point is now long gone. What’s more, getting to where you are has changed you. You are not the same person. Perhaps what is truer, is that you are the same person, but you are much clearer now on who you are, or at least who you are meant to be.
The good news is that with every step you take after halfway, you are closer to the end than you are to the beginning, even if you could go back, it would take less of you to get to the end than to return to the beginning, so take a deep breath, and take another step…
The following may or may not happen at the halfway point, perhaps it will at the proverbial “wall”, five clicks from the finish. I believe that at some point, when your legs start to fold, and the mirages start to form on the horizon, and every inch feels like a mile, you must ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing. For me the most powerful answer I can find is that this, whatever it is, is about something bigger than myself. That somehow if I do not get there, the world will be poorer for it. That I owe it not only to myself, but also to everyone else that believes that this life is worth something. That it is always, always about US, not I.
Somewhere in that idea, there’s some transformative power ready to go to work. The trouble is that I AM at halfway, or at least I’m pretty sure I am (hope I’m not altogether lost). And when you’re here, inspiration falls on deaf ears. The people clapping and holding up signs by the side as they sip their drinks are only useful somewhere near the start, and somewhere near the finish, and frankly need to be got rid of. I cannot write because I am not inspired, and I fear that I now lack the ability to inspire. So I am writing this not in some ludicrous hope that spurred on by it, you will feel like a
new person, starting tomorrow, and coast to the finish.
All I hope is that reading this will give you enough hope to take the next step. It may not seem like much, but if we can do that, and what’s more do it selflessly, then a transformation can begin. When hope runs out, LOVE will light the way.
