Sunday, November 29, 2009

endurance

watched a documentary yesterday that had my
mouth falling open most of the way, and then
left me totally empty.

it was the story of an expedition to antarctica
and the WOODEN boat got stuck in the ice, eventually
crushed....the crew went here and there and did
impossible things....and finally made it back alive.
every single one of them. it was amazing.

the boat's name??? ENDURANCE

no kidding.

the show itself lacked any kinda depth i wanted.
i wanted to know how their insides were, how they
handled it. what they got out of it. all that. but
it didn't go there.

the story itself was incredibly remarkable. but
without the other, i felt empty.

at the end, it told what happened to everyone.
things like one guy enlisted in the war (WWI) and
died six weeks into it.

i just sat and shook my head.

all the stories of what happened to them got me.

why didn't they just curl up into balls right in
the beginning and die right then in the ice??? it
woulda been SOOOOOOOO much easier.

i felt so empty.

but here's the thing.........i don't know what those
men went thru and what they got out of it. i have
GOT to believe there was huge inner things goin'
on in them.

and i started thinking about everyone's lives.
every single one of us has an expedition we're goin'
on. and yeah, we may not be trekkin' across hundreds
of miles of ice with frostbite, but we've got our
own ice that we're dealin' with.

what's the point if we just endure and get to the end
and die???

endurance.

to me, that lacks something.

i want to endure, yes........but i want to do so
much more than endure!

otherwise....what the heck's the point? we should just
curl up at the first sign of trouble.

so what does that mean???

it's not the destination, it's the journey.

that's it, isn't it?

the timing is great.
i feel like i'm goin' into yet another endurance
stretch with part of my life. sigh.
but if i just try to get thru......then i've totally
missed the point here.

it's HOW i get thru.

2 comments:

Merry ME said...

I read a book a long time ago about the "Endurance" men. It is a remarkable story. Like climbing Mt. Everest, I wonder what it is that moves people to such great feats. I probably shouldn't compare my life to theirs but somedays I feel like I slug through the ice barely putting one foot in front of another. The good news, and there is good news, is that there are other days when I feel like making a snowman!

Anonymous said...

Maybe you could say,
She didn't just endure.... she became.

:)

D