You Live and You Learn
I grew up in a wrestling family. My Dad was a wrestler. My Dad's brothers were wrestlers. My Mom's brother was a wrestler. So, I was a wrestler.
For most of my childhood, I was pretty good at it, too. Then, in high school, I was eventually moved up to Varsity. Suddenly, winning wasn't quite so easy. I lost more matches that season than I had in the previous four seasons combined. I didn't handle it particularly well.
Was I burned out? Distracted? Afraid of losing? Probably some combination of all three. Mostly, I was sixteen. I didn't know much about myself, much less what I wanted from life. So I quit. I walked into practice one afternoon, handed my coach my gear, and told him I was done. No dramatic farewell. Just a confused kid who didn't want to wrestle anymore.
Before I left, my coach asked me a question.
"What kind of a person are you to do something like this?"
I don't remember what I said nor do I suppose it mattered, but I remember how I felt.
There are things people say to us when we're young that we carry long after we've forgotten everything else about the moment. Sometimes they encourage us and sometimes they haunt us. That question did both.
I spent years wondering whether leaving the way did had revealed something about me. Something weak or perhaps shameful. Eventually, I made myself a promise that I'd never walk away from something difficult again. My second mistake.
Years passed. I finished school, started a career, got married and eventually found running. It started with an eight-mile run that left me exhausted and inexplicably wanting more. Soon I was running half marathons, and before long, I'd decided to run the Chicago Marathon.
I trained for months. I ran when I was tired, when the weather was miserable, and when there were a hundred other things I'd rather have been doing. Every week, the distances grew. Every week, something that had once seemed impossible became a little more ordinary. And then I injured my feet.
Suddenly, the marathon I'd spent months preparing for was in jeopardy. I was angry, frightened, and increasingly depressed. What should have been an ordinary setback in an athletic pursuit became something far more troubling.
I had convinced myself that finishing this race would somehow redeem me from something long forgotten and not particularly terrible to anyone. Just a decision I'd made as a confused teenager who no longer wanted to wrestle.
But somewhere in the years that followed, I'd allowed that decision to become a judgment about my character. I had come to believe that accomplishing something sufficiently difficult might finally prove that judgment wrong.
I couldn't simply be disappointed about an injury and I couldn't accept that sometimes our bodies refuse to cooperate with our ambitions. To me, not reaching the finish line would mean something about who I was.
It's difficult to describe how dark that period became. Looking back, what troubles me most isn't how badly I wanted to run the marathon. It's how much of my own worth I'd attached to whether I could. My third mistake.
Eventually, I made it to Chicago. After months of preparation and hours of running, I crossed the finish line. Nothing happened. I was exhausted. My legs hurt. I was proud of what I'd accomplished. But the question I'd carried since I was sixteen was still there.
What kind of a person are you?
I'd done exactly what I believed I needed to do, but somehow, it wasn't enough.
I wish I could tell you that I recognized the problem then. That I understood how unfairly I'd been judging myself, or that I'd discovered something profound about the difference between achievement and self-worth. I didn't. I simply went looking for another finish line.
I kept running. Eventually, I found triathlon. There were more races, more finish lines, and more goals that seemed impossibly far away until, one day, they weren't.
Sometimes I succeeded and other times I failed spectacularly. There were moments of enormous satisfaction and others of bitter disappointment. And every time I accomplished something I'd once considered extraordinary, I found myself wondering what came next. The answer I was looking for never seemed to be waiting where I expected it.
I don't know exactly when that began to change. There wasn't a particular race or conversation that suddenly made everything clear or a moment when I stopped in my tracks and understood the meaning of it all.
It happened gradually. Somewhere among the years of training, racing, failing, recovering, and trying again, I began to see things differently. The finish lines hadn't been changing me. Or at least, not in the way I'd imagined. The changes had been happening all along.
On the mornings when I didn't feel like training. During the long hours spent preparing for something that might never happen. In the disappointments that forced me to reconsider what I wanted and why I wanted it. I'd spent so much time looking for an answer at the end of the journey that I'd overlooked what the journey itself was giving me.
A couple of years after my first marathon, I returned to Chicago. The first time I'd run with headphones, listening to music for hours. It helped pass the time and kept my mind occupied while I worked toward the finish line. The second time, I left them behind.
I listened to the crowds. I watched people cheering for complete strangers. I looked at the neighborhoods, the buildings, and the faces lining the streets. I heard the sounds of a city that had opened itself to thousands of people attempting something difficult. I'd run those streets before, but somehow, it felt like I was seeing them for the first time.
The distance was the same. The finish line hadn't moved, but the experience was different. I wasn't simply trying to get somewhere. I was appreciating where I was.
I've thought about that quite a bit over the years. How often do we move through life with our attention fixed on whatever comes next? The next promotion, the next accomplishment, the next opportunity to prove that we're successful, capable, or worthy of something? We spend so much time imagining how wonderful life will be when we finally arrive. And all the while, life is happening around us.
I still believe in setting ambitious goals. There are races I want to qualify for, places I want to go, and limits I want to challenge. Some of those goals may remain forever out of reach. I'm beginning to think that's okay.
Maybe some things are better left on pedestals, because the reaching gives us somewhere to go. Something to wonder about and a reason to get up tomorrow and see what's possible. The trouble begins when we convince ourselves that life will somehow be more meaningful once we've arrived.
These days, I coach endurance athletes. I love watching someone accomplish a goal they've worked toward for months. These days, I've come to appreciate something even more rewarding. The possibility that their effort might inspire someone else to begin.
Would I rather impress someone who runs a 2:30 marathon, or inspire someone who's never run a mile to get off the couch and give it a try? I know my answer.
Maybe that person will never run a marathon. Maybe they'll discover that running isn't for them at all. But perhaps they'll find something else worth pursuing. Something that challenges them, excites them, or makes them curious about what else life might have to offer. And maybe they'll bring someone else along.
I've spent a lot of years thinking about that afternoon in the wrestling room. For a long time, I believed I owed my coach an answer. That if I accomplished enough difficult things, I could somehow prove that the boy who walked out of practice wasn't the person I would become. But I don't owe him an answer. I never did.
Quitting wrestling didn't make me a quitter any more than finishing a marathon made me a better person. No medal, finishing time, or accomplishment could ever settle the matter.
What kind of a person am I? I suppose that's something I'll spend the rest of my life trying to answer. Not to my wrestling coach or to anyone else. To myself.
Someday, if I'm fortunate, I'll have the opportunity to look back on the life I've lived. I hope I'll remember the people I loved, the places I went, the chances I took, and the things I tried even when I wasn't sure I could succeed. I hope I'll remember the people who helped me along the way, and that I was able to do the same for a few others.
I hope I can say I made good use of the time I was given and that I did the best I could with what I had.
I still have big goals. There are finish lines I haven't crossed and questions about my own potential that remain unanswered. Maybe some of them always will.
I am meant for more. More adventures. More experiences. More living. But wherever the road takes me, I'll leave the headphones at home.