The Marathons We Run

This is a tribute, to you.

I don’t feel generous of spirit all the time (see Blowhards & Douche Nozzles post) BUT it occurs to me more and more that we are all engaged in the intense business of marathoning.

We are each running different kinds.

Some physical. Some emotional. Some spiritual. Some mental. Some a combination.

We are running long distance through grief not knowing how much longer to the finish line. We are trekking through the bogs of parenting, doing the best we can. Trying to do better. We are working to make a difference in Africa, in our garden, in our schools– in our ability to be true to ourselves.

A dear friend just completed another (as in his 22nd) Iron Man in South Africa.

For anyone who does not know what an Iron Man Triathlon is (which I did not), it consists of a 24-mile swim, a 112-mile bicycle ride and 26.2-mile run, raced in that order and without a break.

Holy &^%$, right? Except it feels like a metaphor for the various triads we are all engaged in.

He is amazing. He finished!

But way more impressive than that… he did his worst time ever and POSTED it. He struggled and SHARED it. He had to seek medical help along the way and put it out there for the world to see.

Why?

Because he is in for the journey, not the win.

He cares more about inspiring those of us struggling than hobnobbing with the winners. Or appeasing his sponsors. It’s a brave and bold move because critics and naysayers are everywhere. There are always people who feel safer judging than doing.

That’s true for all of us, right?

When I write, I know there will be people who think I could have said it better, or missed the point, or am not literary or polished enough. And they very well may be right!

But per Teddy Roosevelt’s speech in 1910, I am in the arena and daring greatly.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

‘In the arena’ refers to so many things.

Elementary school teachers, coaches, animal-shelter volunteers– the list of kind contributors is endless. Not to mention the vast number of people ‘in the arena’ fighting the more invisible fights– depression, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Cancer.

There is sickness, but there is also the profound struggle to love with wild abandon, to have unbridled faith– to seek, to give, to share and create from the deepest wells inside ourselves.

There are so many externally invisible marathons.

In Mark Strand’s poem, “When I Turned A Hundred”, he writes,

I wanted to go on an immense journey, to travel night and day into

the unknown until, forgetting my old self, I came into possession

of a new self, one that I might have missed on my previous travels.

This immense journey, this series of marathons, requires letting go.

Small deaths of self along the way.

I am always trying to shed the last version of myself in order to become the most wholeheartedly alive person I am capable of being. The process leaves me excruciatingly vulnerable at times and raw.

But it is everything.