Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas

by Alexi Pappas

I thought back to middle school when I got into a fight with this girl I really didn’t get along with. When our teacher finally intervened, she quarantined us in a room called “the pod” for an hour to figure things out, just us two eleven-year-olds. My adversary and I spent a good forty-five minutes in silence, glaring at each other from under our unibrows. But in the end we agreed that while we didn’t want or need to be friends, we could be civil for both our sakes. I resolved to be similarly civil with pain. Before my races and big workouts, I worked on consciously shifting my mental energy from dreading upcoming pain to simply recognizing that the pain would always show up no matter what, and even though I utterly despised it, I should try to greet it politely like a guest at a dinner party and be fully prepared to open the door when it does. Sometimes pain arrives slowly, like butter melting on toast. Or it can be quick, like butter hitting a very hot pan. Whichever variety of pain I’m getting, I know it is coming and I am prepared to handle it gracefully.