The Shared Experience

Today’s Numbers: Nancy's Total Movement Mileage: 708.5 (running: 533.3; walking: 30.4; biking: 144.8) Money Found For Food Bank: $58.69

2,015 in 2015 Change Hounds progress: Nancy: 708.5 Aaron: 430.8 (b: 382.1; w: 48.7)  Elly: 160.9 Total: 1300.2

I think there's a saying about how better things are when they're shared. I'm sure there's a saying for that, I just don't know what it is. Perhaps that's because I'm not always up for that notion when it comes to the smaller things in life. For instance, I always want the biggest artichoke, and I hardly ever share even when everyone else has long finished his or hers. I don't always care to share my space when sitting next to someone (room, please!), and I confess it's only recently that I've been willing to share my scrapbook supplies with PC#2. For real. And, I know none of that makes me sound awesome, but I own it nonetheless.

What I highly value -- crave, if you will -- is the shared experience. Whether that's actually engaging in an activity together or walking a mile in another's shoes (so as to understand someone else), it all boils down to that kind of sharing for me.

Aaron and I are heading toward 20 years of marriage on our next anniversary, and this has actually been a topic of both discussion and reflection during the last year. Being married this amount of time and raising a family inherently implies we whiffed sharing everything all the time even with the best of intentions. We tried, but, we're also totally human and blew it now and then. We still have a good chunk of time the whole fam is under one roof, so it mattered to me a lot that we take stock and figure out what things are working and what things need regrouping and refocusing before our chunk of time is but a sliver or gone. I don't want to miss sharing the experience of this time together. I'd even give up my artichoke for it (but, let's face it, that's easy to say when everyone's afraid I'd bite their arm if they tried to take mine no one would ever ask that of me).

The shared experience theme was with me all day today as Aaron and I did a whole host of activities together. Often, we had different roles in what we were doing, but we were always on the path together. We arrived here at the end of the day happy and satisfied that, yes, it was just a good day.

And, we started it off together with the morning run:

Just like with most of our endeavors today, we accomplished the end goal of the run in our own ways. We brought ourselves to the table (road, in this case); he walked fast, I ran slow, I mocked him for missing obvious coins in the road, and he provided running commentary about our outing. Most important, we shared the experience of the whole.

And, that is how it's done.