It was freezing today in Boston. Really freezing. -1 degrees freezing with a wind chill of -20, which may not seem very cold if you were on Mount Washington today (-80) or if you are a polar bear, but for the rest of us, it was freezing.
My eyelashes froze.
Oddly, the rest of me enjoyed the one mile walk from the train station to work. I'm not making that up. It was quite seriously a lovely, freezing day.
All that was required to see it that way was an 800 fill goose down jacket and a change of reference.
My change of reference started with a mud pit, my first obstacle of my first Spartan Race. I face planted and while my nose was in the mud, it crossed my mind that this mud was composed of 33 percent water, 33 percent dirt, and 33 percent cow poop.
I wanted to quit, to tell my partner and everyone else that this was not what I signed on for. But my partner was already out of the mud and swinging from super sized monkey bars. No one else cared.
I got up, wiped the mud off, and kept going. The further I went through that course, the more the mud became a pleasant memory. Compared to rope climbs, cargo nets, rock bucket carries, tire flips, and belly crawls under a field of barbed wire, the mud had been a spa!
Compared to Mount Washington, Boston was warm.
Compared to climbing a mountain above tree line in winter, walking a flat mile to work in -1 degrees was cake.
And it felt like cake. It felt like just another obstacle. The rest of the day was like that, too. Each challenge, each demand, each request... just another obstacle. Walking past the coffee shop planted right smack in the center of the hospital? Just another obstacle, just one more chance to jump into the mud pit and wipe away one more fear.