Nearly every Monday night I meet a group of friends up at the football stadium and we spend about an hour or so running up at down the steps. From the bottom to the top there are 90 rows. Ninety up and 90 back down, multiplied by 8 or 10 or if we’re feeling especially competitive, we’ll do it a dozen times. Then we want to puke but that’s another story. We count these rows as our feet hit the orange painted square of concrete with a white row number in the center of the square.
When you get to the very top, row 90, there’s a metal railing to keep you from going over the edge but you can stand there and feel a very strong breeze that circles through the concrete and steel structure. Some days when the sun is burning hot and the air is thick, that breeze at the top of row 90 is what keeps you going.
Then there’s row 68 (or maybe it’s 70, but let’s go with 68, it’s close). On that concrete step there isn’t any orange paint. Instead there is a bright yellow line of paint all along the edge. I’m not sure why that one step is yellow, it doesn’t make much sense to me unless it’s slightly steeper than all the rest and the yellow is a warning. What I do know is that ever time I make it to that yellow step two thirds of the way up, I hit a wall. I can almost physically feel my insides jerk up as my foot comes crashing down on the cracked yellow paint and it takes every ounce of energy I have to make it the rest of the way up to row 90. I have to imagine the breeze waiting for me at the top is pulling me forward. Just keep going. You can do it. The yellow line isn’t going to beat you this time.
You push and you grunt and you growl your way up. Your reward is a pounding heart threatening to leap out of your chest, a shortness of breath that makes you forget that you really did give up smoking 6 years ago, and a shimmy in your quadriceps that makes you wonder if you’ll be able to haul yourself back down those 90 rows. You lean against the metal railing and listen quietly to the wind as it blows around you. The sound of your own labored breathing begins to flow at a semi-normal pace and then you hear it…the hum. The hum of the air as it whips through that concrete and steel structure passing through columns, support beams, ramps, and breezeways – and it hums at you a final reward for making it to the top and making it past that painted yellow line.
So, the questions for you are these: What is your yellow paint? What trips you up and arrests your progress in life? What is your humming breeze, your incentive and reward for pushing through? Think about it and get back to me.