XC-skiing stands for cross-country skiing, which boils down to running with ski, thin like needles, through a snow-covered forest. And this is what I did today, first time on ski this winter. And know what, it was awesome, breath-taking, and this in several aspects. As desk culprit the possibilities to keep a certain fitness level are restricted. Nonetheless I need to use every possibility for cross-country skiing. If I have one, then I do run until I reach my limits. So either my legs, my lung or my heart will give up, preferably in exactly this order. On the positive side we have, once your legs go on strike, you have some time to enjoy the beautiful snow-covered trees and the silence around you, once you are able to breath again and your heart-beat isn’t hearable in your ears anymore.

But hey, you have no idea what fun this is. You are coming fully concentrated with high-speed around a corner and you see this huge ramp in front of you. Several hundred meters of uphill pain. You are feeling already exhausted, your body is tired and you know, the next meters will definitely hurt. You know you will reach your limits here. Your heart is beating til your throat and every bone shows suddenly some reluctance to go forward. Nonetheless you are jumping into this hill with a smile. You even increase the speed and the fighter within you awakes. The pain is overlain by a layer of overwhelming happiness. This feeling is awesome. Boah, it’s comparable with … yeah, I really believe it’s comparable. Amazing, isn’t it?

Do you know this feeling? This feeling of emptiness? Do you feel sad at times but you don’t know why? Do you feel restless at times with no reason? Do you feel out of peace at times even if everything seems to be alright? Strange, isn’t it? But welcome to the club.

I do feel this sadness and restlessness at times. There are happy days and there are sad days, for all of us. That’s human. But at times the sad days reach a new quality. Means you feel this sadness, you are feeling you are not in peace, but you don’t have any clue why. This is kind of dubious. You are having a beautiful wife, lovely kids, an interesting job, nice friends, everything is there to be happy, everything is in place. But you are not, you know you should, but you are not happy at times. Strange, isn’t it?

But what is it? What is the reason of all this? Do you have the feeling that you have done already all major tasks of live? You are having a lovely family and you are done with evolution. You are having a challenging job, but you are realizing that focusing too much on your job does not bring you the benefit you expected. You are doing a lot of sports, but you don’t improve in that as you did some years back. Things seem to be set already in your life, decided and fixed. You are starting to think about the “remaining years”. You are realizing that you didn’t pursue most of your biggest dreams you had in life and you are realizing the door is closing already. Most of them can not be fulfilled anymore.

Do you know how this is called? It’s called midlife crisis I believe. But as the word says, it’s a crisis and hence it has an end. It will go over, vanish. And do you know what the best therapy is? Yeah, smile …. just smile 🙂