Sixty Cigarettes and the Boston Marathon

The book I am reading right now is about a guy who decided to stop smoking sixty cigarettes per day and pick up running instead. He made that decision in his mid thirties, with no prior athletic experience, and he turned out to be a pretty impressive runner. Or, if not impressive, at least consistent, despite the fact that he didn’t even buy a pair of running shoes until he was three decades and thousands of Marlboros in.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but I looked ahead and the writer didn’t win any big races. He didn’t qualify for the Boston Marathon his first time out of the gate, and he didn’t light a celebratory smoke at the end with a zippo lighter engraved with “26.2.” He didn’t go to the Olympics. He broke no records. In fact, not a lot happens in the book that is worth putting on his resume, his dating profile, or arguably, a full length memoir. But here I am, intrigued by a story of a man who didn’t always get it right.

The point of the story is that this guy’s big win wasn’t crossing a finish line (as you may have guessed). His big win was Tuesday mornings. When he was tired from closing up the bar where he worked, and the sky was spitting half snow, half rain, and he still decided to wake up and run. 

I’m sure our human obsession with victory can probably be traced back to some sort of evolutionary criteria.  We want others to know us as the last woman standing! Not “explorers.” Not “learners.” Not the lady who “got it wrong lots of times, but still hangs out.” We tear up our rejection letters and frame our degrees and fail to remember any journey that wasn’t success. We mold and form the very fibre of what created us into this mindset where we must come out as victorious or nothing at all,  instead of better than we were. We complete a milestone and are forced to answer “Did you win?” Instead of, “Are you stronger now? Did it hurt less this time? Are you learning?”

Running for the journey (not the medals.)

And I am one of the guiltiest. I shy away from challenges, where winning is not in the cards, or where failing is likely. Yet, here we stand halfway through 2020 where we are asked to do one of the scariest (or bravest?) things that any human can do: be wrong. The social fabric of our world and the hope for a better future depends on our use of this battle cry, “We got it wrong before: our laws and our actions and our words. And we will probably get it wrong again. But I am still going to put my running shoes on.” That is not a short story with a big win.  But I am realizing now, that’s never what the world asked for. All we have ever been asked to do is to show up even when it’s raining.

Beautiful humans, this life, this world, this desire for a better humanity is not a sports game with confined rules and time limits, and you will not win with defense. It’s a jog by yourself after you have decided to stop smoking sixty cigarettes per day. There is not a winner, and no one is handing you dixie cups of blue Gatorade at the thirteen mile mark. It’s just you. Deciding what the bravest thing is for that particular mile. 

I wish we could remind everyone of this fact, especially those who sit behind keyboards on social media, and wait, crouching in the figurative Facebook bushes for someone with a differing opinion so they can pounce.  I wish we could let them know that the ferocity that you defend your beliefs does not count as a win without integrating new ideas or new perspectives or new facts into your thinking. Neither does staying in your comfort zone. You don’t score points by being loud or being right or having a track record free from any past mistakes. In fact, you don’t score points at all.

Our hurting world does not need one more perfect person ready for contests they know they can win. Our desperate earth, riddled with growing pains and battle cries and a faint glimmer of better days on the horizon, only asks for this: someone who is going to show up on Tuesday after thirty years of smoking cigarettes, knowing they probably won’t win this one, but they are here. And, Lord, they are better than they were before.