Journey of 1000 Days

In the mid 70’s I met a man who later became one of my best friends. Of course, everyone who met Tim thought he was their best friend. Tim had a contagious, insatiable passion for Life and he seemed to infect everyone with his madness for living. He called it a “blessed rage to live.” While our times together were infrequent, they were often memorable. There were bike rides up Glendora Mountain Road to the ski lifts atop Mt. Baldy on Thanksgiving morning, all night rides from Bad Water, Death Valley to Whitney Portals ... sometimes there were doubles tennis matches against players much better than we were (and we won our share) ... or working with Tim on ideas that we hoped would change the world.

One of those ideas came in the mid 80’s when Tim was working on a book he was writing titled Holy Sweat ... the book he was writing took a spiritual run at the idea of peak performance and the art of experiencing excellence in life. Ironically, Tim and I, were both going through some difficult things: broken marriages, unpaid bills, a schedule so full of obligation there was little room for introspection. WE laughed at the hypocrisy of writing about excellence in a time when our lives were being trampled in mediocrity.

As we talked, we thought about what might give our lives more focus - wondering how we might take the ideas of peak performance and bring them into the reality of our own messy world. Not just when we were in the midst of one of our occasional adventures, but when circumstances like the ones we were facing smothered us and gave us plenty of excuses. That’s when the Journey of 1000 days was born.

We started by identifying the things that made us feel most alive. For us it wasn’t too hard to decide what charged our engines. We knew from experience we could discuss a movie or a line in a good book for hours without noticing the the clock tic once. Tim was an avid journal writer and I was an aspiring one so we added journal writing to the list - taking even a few moments to jot down ideas made the day seemed more focused and gave us a chance to connect things and to begin to make sense of the madness. We were also aging athletes who knew that physical challenge had to be part of the formula. We knew from experience that the physical is tied to our experiencing excellence and joy in all parts of our lives. And, just like that we had our list.

Everyday we would do three things:

1. Take a line from a movie, a song or a good book that resonated with us that day.

2. Perform some physical activity.

3. Record both things in an ongoing journal called the Journey of 1,000 Days.

Now, we knew this would be a difficult challenge. To assuage the difficulty a bit, we said that we knew there would be days when reading or running a lot might be difficult; so we accepted that recording reflections on just one line or one pithy quote or ten push ups - anything would suffice to meet the requirement. We decided that in one month we would get together and hold each other accountable for the journey ...

... And so began our journey of 1,000 Days ...

BUT .... That was 35 years ago !

SO why revisit the past ???

I am glad you asked!

I remember attempting to live intentionally in pursuing intellectual, spiritual and physical growth back with Tim. I have recently become aware that my life is lacking the passion and relevance that I had when I was younger ... While I stay active, it is somewhat sporadic and often ho-hum. Reruns of Gunsmoke are cool, but after awhile ... zzzz. I want to share the Journey and see who else might find a simple approach to intentionality refreshing ... who knows, maybe even life changing. I am fishing the idea out there to find out who bites. I would love to have fellow travelers. I will keep posting updates to blog the Journey to those that wish to follow.

#Journeyof1000Days #TheJourney #Intentionality #Journaling