Suffer Well

We arrange our days like careful furniture,
paths cleared, corners cushioned, so our shins do not find the coffee table at 2 a.m.
We chase ease by habit, yet hardship still pulls up a chair, uninvited and on time.

Convenience speaks loudly about saving minutes,
but meaning talks softer, almost a whisper,
and you have to lean your life toward it to hear.

I choose long races on purpose, two hundred miles of deliberate difficulty,
a moving apprenticeship where the syllabus is weather, terrain, and doubt.
Day one runs on enthusiasm, day two trades chatter for truth,
day three says little, and teaches much.

Out there my job title changes to beginner,
my quads draft resignation letters I refuse to sign,
and every aid station feels like office hours with a strict professor.

Old pages hint at this, a thorn that stays, a path taken straight through trouble,
a Roman reminding me that fire tempers more than it destroys.
These are not relics behind glass, they are working maps with fingerprints.

Suffering is not a shrine for me to kneel before,
nor a villain to outrun,
it is a stern tutor with a kind curriculum, sanding pride, revealing the quiet core

Some days I bargain with the hill and call it strategy,
other days I lace up, write the line I did not want to write,
offer gentler words than I feel, and keep moving anyway.

I am not hunting pain, I am refusing to be ruled by comfort,
letting resistance build the quiet strength that flash never grants.
In that long conversation between breath and step, a steadier person emerges.

If you find me near the end, salt on my face and shoulders set,
know this is the lesson I am still learning, and glad to learn again,
the road does not love us, but the walking remakes us,
and the morning, patient as mercy, keeps arriving.