The Mighty Endorphin...

Day 3 of my new-and-improved workout routine.  Running harder and faster, really getting my heart rate up there.

Around about the 15-minute mark, I started to notice some changes.  It was starting to hurt less.  In fact, more than that - I was starting to feel pretty good!  The music I was listening to was just suddenly so awesome!  And my eyelids were getting sooo heavy.  I was getting really drowsy, but not sleepy, and I wasn't slowing down at all.  I was still pumping away at a furious pace, to match the beating of my heart - left, right, left, right, left right left right left right bang bang bang bang.  It felt more like nodding, that state where the opiate is so overwhelmingly pleasurable that the user repeatedly passes in and out of consciousness, or "nods off."

And that's when I realized it:  I was really high!

And while I enjoyed it, and while I knew I was doing something good for myself - and so I should just let myself enjoy this, could even consider it my reward for putting in the effort - there was a part of me that still felt bad about it and felt like I was doing something wrong.  And then I was right back to trying to answer that same question I keep coming back to:  if I'm still getting high, but just in different and less destructive ways, then am I really getting better?

If my goal here was to stop getting high in destructive and/or dangerous ways, then I could easily answer that question, "Yes, I am getting better."  But that isn't my goal.  My goal is to try and stop needing to get high all the time, period, regardless of method.  Because if I can't rid myself of the need to get high all the time, then when the healthy methods stop working as well for me, or when I get into a dark place again for one reason or another (we all have them, life is full of dark places we must traverse once in a while), then I'm going to turn to unhealthy methods again to satisfy that desire.

I'm not going to stop meditating, and I'm not going to stop studying Mathematics and other Sciences, and I'm not going to stop playing video games, and I'm not going to stop having awesome sex with Her, and I'm not going to stop writing, and I'm not going to stop working out.  So, if I am getting high off of these things, then I guess that means I have to learn how to live with that.

So, then, can I adjust my goal of trying to not get high at all, regardless of method?  Is that even a reasonable goal to have set myself?  Can I reasonably expect to be able to achieve that without moving to a cave somewhere and spending the rest of my life meditating like an itinerant sage?  Is getting high just something that I need in order to make my life feel worth living?  And if so, is that true for everyone, or just me?  What if the only real choice I have is the method I use?  And is that something I can live with?  No, I can live with it.  But is it something I can learn to be okay with?

I don't know the answers.  But I know I'm not done asking the questions.