Staying In Your Own Lane

Over the week and perhaps especially today, I have observed myself drawing on scenes and interviews I’ve taken in of the Olympics and using them as grist for the reflective and metaphoric mill. The ideas of “focusing on your own game,” “running your own race,” and “staying in your own lane” were popular ones from my reflections over the past 24 hours and seemed to weave themselves into conversations I’ve had with others. These ideas come in part from an interview I listened to yesterday where strategies for running the kind of track races in which each person is assigned to and must stay in their own lane on the track were discussed. The interviewee explained how the athletes have practiced these races so many times, how they “know their times” (that is, how fast they can run), and that their task now, at these types of events, is not to worry about what other competitors are doing but to focus instead on their own lane, running their own race, aiming to perform up to or compete with their own personal bests.

This leads me to mention a book I’ve been reading this summer, The Answer to How is Yes, by Peter Block (2002). In it, he asks one to consider first the question “what matters?” rather than to bypass it and immediately jump to the question how–how do I do this or that, achieve this or that, solve x or y or get from point z to n? It is not a book against problem-solving and action but it is a book that encourages one to consider questions such as: is this the right problem to be trying to solve? Is this meaningful or important (and to me)? What is meaningful and important? What matters? What do I value?

Coming back to the race strategy, we might ask: am I running my own race or someone else’s? What do I want my race to be? What is my lane about? We might also remember the journey we are taking in our lane is ours. It is real and it matters.

At one point, Peter Block mentions the questions: “What is the transformation in me that is required?” and “What courage is required of me right now?” (p. 21). Also, “what measurement would have meaning to me?” (p. 23). I have heard some athletes speak of having faced significant challenges over the past four years–whether because of significant personal injury (such as broken bones) or interpersonal tragedy or loss. For some, getting to the Olympics was measurement enough, a meaningful accomplishment; aiming for a medal, though desirable, was not highly meaningful or the only goal or source of satisfaction. What measurement would have meaning for me? is a question I really like–not because I am gung-ho about measurement and certainly not about valuing people based on particular scores or number oriented results but because it invites each of us to consider, again, what is meaningful to me, in the context of everything else.

Sadly, I know that what can feel meaningful to a person can also lead them into all sorts of problems and traps. I am thinking of students I have worked with who have believed that a mark of 90 or more and no less is what has meaning to them. The trap here is often though that their belief, fear, and sometimes experience, based on how they have been treated by others, is that without the achievement of that marker, they are not of worth or value. The question of what measurement has meaning to me gets us closer to considering our own lane, assessing our values and directions and being guided more by that than swept along by what other people say or are doing in their lanes but it can still, of course, have pitfalls for us depending on our experiences thus far and vulnerabilities.

For those of you who have been watching–or participating–in the summer Olympics, I wonder what reflections you have had? What metaphors and ideas may have been presenting themselves to you?