Form for Function

Dear Gentle Penguin,

I hate running.  Truly hate it.  But I like being healthy, so I try.  And I try.  And I try.  Recently, my daughters and I ran our third 5k, and while I loved pushing myself, sharing the experience with my daughters and finishing, I still hated the running part.

As I thanked my sister for her support with the event, for my girls and for me, I told her I hoped to love running someday the way she does.  (Truth be told, I figured I’d love it by now…three years into trying.)

Gentle Penguin, if you don’t believe in the power of words, you won’t understand how I felt when my sister responded:  ”You don’t have to love running.”

Great!  Because I hate it.  Those simple words lifted immeasurable weights off my mind and shoulders.

Later that week, I thought about this dilemma as I drove to a client’s office in Cincinnati, half listening to the story of Scott Summit’s drive to start a prosthetics company.  ”Too often we settle for function, sacrificing form. I say ‘that’s crap!’ … I wanted people to stare at these prosthetics…for the right reasons…because they’re beautiful!”

I don’t know why, but that stuck with me all day and night and throughout the following week.  I thought about it in relation to my invoices, my clothes, my home.  But it wasn’t until nearly three weeks later that I thought about it in relation to the function of running.

Did I mention that I hate running?  I hate it.

But that night after the 5k, after my sister told me I didn’t have to love running, I did something I love.  Something so full of beauty that I didn’t even register it as function.  That was the night I dressed up in my best ball gown, pulled on my gloves and dance shoes and spent the evening Waltzing, Fox Trotting, Cha-Cha-ing, Hustling, Tangoing, and Sambaing.  By the end of the evening, my heart was racing, and I was as sweaty as I had been that morning after the run.  In addition, my pedometer said I took more than 20,000 steps at the dance alone.

I love dancing.

Oh Gentle Penguin, dancing is so beautiful, so fulfilling AND full of function.  Stretching my arms, my shoulders, my legs.  Moving back and forth across the dance floor.  Balancing and spinning, pushing and pulling, reaching and bending.

After I heard Scott’s story, I vowed to never again sacrifice form, to question anything that asks me to.

And so, I have decided in 2012, the Year of Reduction, I am giving up on running.  You can find me on the dance floor.

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