It's a little hard not to be melancholy at the moment. On the back of Sweder's excellent piece of introspection on his thread (Jan 17), I coincidentally ran across the story of Jim McLaren, who took up running after losing a leg in a car accident. With the aid of a prosthesis he completed the New York and Boston marathons in a little over 3 hours, only then to have a car crash into him
during a race and leave him a quadraplegic. Far from being bitter about it, he says:
"Whenever I find myself frustrated with my handicap or looking at envy at an able-bodied man, I ask myself this: If I could get out of this wheelchair right now and walk across the room, would that really get me to the place I most want to go with my life? Because let's be honest here - the other side of this room is not my ultimate destination. My ultimate destination is self-knowledge and enlightenment. Do I have to get there on foot? Or can I find some other path."
This then got me thinknig about Dick and Rick Hoyt again, a father and son combination who have been inspiring me for a couple of years now. If you don't know their story, please do yourself a favour and visit
http://www.teamhoyt.com. Here's part of their story:
...if theyre not in a marathon they are in a triathlon that daunting, almost superhuman, combination of 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of bicycling, and 2.4 miles of swimming. Together they have climbed mountains, and once trekked 3,735 miles across America.
Its a remarkable record of exertion all the more so when you consider that Rick can't walk or talk.
For the past twenty five years or more Dick, who is 65, has pushed and pulled his son across the country and over hundreds of finish lines.
Made all the more remarkable because Dick had a heart attack last year, but is still out there, every day. If you ever get the chance to see their video, be warned, it makes all but the most hard-hearted of grown men cry. Certainly if you're a father or ever had a father, it can't fail to move you at your core.
Andy has mentioned the story of Yates and Simpson before too - the two friends on a remote mountain in Peru who got into trouble, and Simpson had to cut a rope sending Yates to his death to save his own life, yet miraculously Yates survived and crawled down alone. Their thirst for life and finding (and going beyond) human limits is an astounding story. I had the privilege of hearing Simpson on the lecture circuit a couple of years ago, and was astonished by his (their) voracity for life.
One more - I also heard a lecture ("lecture" is far to severe a word) by Yossi Ghinsberg
http://www.ghinsberg.com/ whose struggle for survival while lost in the Amazon jungle is simply one of the most astonishing stories of human endeavour I have ever heard anywhere. Yossi says: "
Its not about what happens, it is about the way you perceive it and act upon it."
Like Sweder, I'm not sure why I think about these things - but I do, and I'm writing it here because it's what I think about when I run. It's also part of the reason
why I run. My life is pretty mediocre by the standards of many, but if within my mediocre limits I can extend myself, I at least come to understand that my troubles are few, my problems small, and life is still pretty wildly spectacular and wonderful if you can just rise above the unimportant things that conspire to drag us down.
And if that all seems rather precocious for an arrogant Aussie, at least have a look at Dick and Rick Hoyt's story
January Jollies
