Where am I running from? Where am I running to?

I’m back in my hometown this week: Cincinnati, Ohio and found myself running around in the beautiful May weather hitting tennis balls with my Dad. I have played tennis for over 20 years! Imagine that. I’ve sprained ankles on the court. Broken ankles. Cramped. Won. Lost. I’ve laughed and cried. I’ve broken racquets. I read Winning Ugly by Brad Gilbert. Open by Agassi. The Full Power of Engagement by Jim Loehr. Had multiple coaches. Played D1 tennis.
The lesson learned is that you run from the ball and you run to the ball. You hit the ball and you run to a strategic position. You hit the ball and you run from a previously strategic position. So what’s it going to be?
As I get older, I think about what it means to settle, meaning the maturity of myself and it’s subparts like my career. Taking this example: I work in startups, so inherently early companies that lack maturity. Will I ever be mature? Or are these companies simply a resemblance of myself? When is it time to run to and when is it time to run from? What is home? The center of my being. Will I find it?
In some of my previous posts, I have considered the emotion wheel, which breaks the world into comfort and discomfort or said differently, possibly love and fear. Am I running from fear or discomfort or running to love and comfort? Is love actually comfortable? Is fear actually discomforting?
I see this oscillation as my own creative destruction. As a parallel, I have never had an absolutely unsuccessful day or absolutely successful day. I can find successes and failures in each day. Moments of pain and pleasure. Running from an aching body part to running to a stretch that feels nice.
Tennis is a funny sport in that you can focus on the spot you’re trying to hit or you can focus on yourself and the meaning you anticipate finding if you hit that spot successfully, but not really both at the same time. I feel tradeoff with startups too. You can either focus on your self, employees, customers, investors, partners, other stakeholders — try focusing on two things at once (I always prioritize customer because that’s why we’re here/happy customers on average make happier employees).Tennis is a funny sport in that you can focus on the spot you’re trying to hit or you can focus on yourself and the meaning you anticipate finding if you hit that spot successfully, but not really both at the same time. I feel tradeoff with startups too. You can either focus on your self, employees, customers, investors, partners, other stakeholders — try focusing on two things at once (I always prioritize customer because that’s why we’re here/happy customers on average make happier employees).
It’s not very easy and not really possible to focus simultaneously on two separate targets. You can oscillate focal points but not hold two points simultaneously (in my surmise). Hold your right and left hand a foot apart, then try to look at both your right and left hand at same time. Then think about your customer and an employee/team mate, try to think about them at the same time. Write down how that feels. Think about a sport. Think about your ego. What winning means. Why it’s meaningful, then think about the target. How does it feel to try and hit both targets (ego’s needs and the physical sporting target)?
Do you feel the spaciousness vary as you oscillate between targets? That’s something that I felt and noticed. I’m guessing it’s likely that you notice the spaciousness as well.
This is short post — I am simply asking “are you running from or running to,” percentage of each, and why? Just like curiosity and judgment are diametrically opposed, so are running from and to. I am also saying that love is the highest form of focus (mind the logical short cutting, feel the intuition) and therefore intelligence (which is why it’s so important to be relaxed to love/enable the parasympathetic system) and why fear is less useful other than to survive. As humans, we are wired to fear as a natural (sympathetic state), yet we are our best when we are relaxed and in love (notice I’m not saying infatuated, I’m saying attracted, as in fear repels, love attracts). As a startup founder (and this applies to all jobs), the ability to execute is defined by the ability to focus (attraction). I am arguing that the ability to focus is the ability to love (parasympathetic). See management type X vs. Y for an older theory that provides a thought study and captures this phenomenon.
Schopenhauer: “it’s hard to find happiness internally, impossible externally,” something like that over 70k thought/feeling attempts (patterns = beliefs) per day with ~34k possible emotions (estimation so far). Yet it’s also binary in that 35k+ given 70k = 100% (whatever that number is), is that a happy human?