I love my children and I adore my wife. Let's start with that understood. I spent 20 years in sports television and made enough money to enjoy the insane things in life that only a small percentage of people would find remotely enjoyable; Ironmans, world travel, destination marathons, all that good stuff. If I saw a listing for a race and my eyes popped out of my head then that race became a mission.
That's how I ended up in New Zealand at the dawn of the new millennium, Iceland in the summer of 2001, Australia, Budapest, Austria, Penticton and a dozen other exotic locales too numerous to mention. Most of the time by myself. It was a tremendous life. I wasn't a pro. I wasn't great at racing, but after struggling for 30 years to find myself, I made damn sure to leave it all at every finish line and have the time of my life afterwards.
It was an existence that bears little resemblance to the life I have now as a husband and a parent.
With a wife, you can still live that existence. With two very small children? It becomes exponentially harder; life becomes a series of decisions and diapers and I don't mind making that trade-off. Being a husband and father is better than any race I will ever run. But at the same time, you need to focus on your children -- hard, if you expect to be a good parent. And with so much time and effort dedicated to them, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that something was missing. A friend of mine once said to me, "You don't do ordinary life well, do you?" and he was right. Too much "ordinary" living and I get antsy...edgy. I get the urge to plot races, to travel again to exotic locales. To find my next hunt and embark on another search and destroy mission...
There is a part of me that feels like a sharp instrument that's been blunted by domestication. Soft when I used to feel hard. I'm used to setting a goal and mowing it down. Now my only goal is to get my three-year old daughter to sleep through the night and be happy the next day. I am the knife that's gone dull through lack of use. And I feel the tug of the "extraordinary life" I used to live more and more with each diaper I change.
My fear is the ordinary; at work, at home, in life. One of my biggest fears is to be lying on my death bed at 90 with regrets, thinking..."I should have climbed that mountain or done the Great Wall of China Marathon or seen the Galapagos...but I didn't." This thought is present every day and it is beyond sad. With that in mind there are two missions that are kicking around my brain. And like in the days of old, my palms get a tad sweaty and my mind races when I start to ponder the details...
First, I have an urge to cycle all the way across our country. Coast to coast. I have a romantic desire to ride 100 miles, getting rained on and honked at during the day, then camping out under the stars in Utah, visiting a country bar in Texas and drinking homemade Kentucky moonshine at night. 30 or 40 days of exploration and pushing myself to the brink of sanity. Damn that sounds like an amazing way to spend a month, doesn't it? Now in reality, romance may give way to saddle sores and sunburn, but my heart pounds every time I really start to think about the feasibility of this mission...and that is my ultimate litmus test.
Second, I'm trying to convince the wife to take our two children (who'll be 5 and 2) and travel the world for a year. Thailand, Costa Rica, Brazil, France, Hackensack...the place or places are irrelevant. It's the experience that matters. Pushing the boundaries of the every day. My wife has been a bit resistant -- for good reason. Travelling with two small children isn't always fun, let alone setting up shop somewhere halfway around the world for six months. But I'm working on her. Every few days we talk about it and I throw some combat zen her way; "life is for the bold, hon," "think about looking back on this when we're 70, babe.." those are two of my favorites...and I think I'm getting to her...
Maybe neither of these fantasies will become a reality. Maybe both will. At this point I don't know. I do know that most people would be content with having an amazing wife and children. I am too...but then again I'm not. I hunger for more. To be challenged, physically, mentally, emotionally. The reality is that without a mission, without a hunt, a little piece of me is dead. Here's hoping that some day I can have both...
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