On Flexibility

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that my next life goal is to do a split.

I have never been very flexible--in life, maybe, but definitely not physically. I have been a runner for as long as I can remember, and for me that was a very low-maintenance identity. You put on your shoes and you went, and I never made the time to stretch before or after. I still drag myself out of bed in the mornings for a quick run, but there's a lot more to me these days.

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to stretch lately--to find yourself doing new things when you thought you knew who you were already. A runner then a CrossFitter then a not much of anything-er, suddenly finding herself at the barre six times a week, daydreaming about split stretches and standing up on tiptoes.

"The whole of life becomes an act of letting go," Yann Martel wrote in Life of Pi.

But maybe life is more of a stretch than anything else.