It took me a while to be ready to write after running the Boston Marathon and experiencing (from afar--thankfully) the events afterwards. I wrote this to share with a small publication within JHSPH that is run by students but thought I would share here as well. I will have a lot more to write about the marathon in the coming weeks.
The death of the eight year old on Monday is an
inspiration to me to renew my commitment to the premise by which I have led my
life up to this point and to take that commitment joyfully into the
future. Reaching one goal shouldn’t make
me complacent. It should simply set me
up to set and reach other goals. If the
goal is not to miss anything in life, then my wife and my sons and I will be
busy. But I think it can be a joyful and happy form of busy reflecting the
passions that each of us have for different things in life in which we wish to
excel and that we wish to enjoy.
Inspiration from an Eight
Year Old I Did Not Know
People sometimes ask me why I lead such a busy life. I see it as a rich and full life that also
happens to be busy rather than just a busy life. But, leaving semantics behind, I would like
to use my Boston Marathon 2013 experience to frame and answer to this question
once and for all.
On April 15, 2013, I ran my
first (and for the foreseeable future only) Boston Marathon. I had worked for three years to get
there. I decided to run a marathon in
January 2010. I started my training for
the 2010 Baltimore Marathon in May of that year and over the next 22 months ran
a total of four marathons before I finally qualified for Boston. April 15 was described in advance by one of
my training partners as the pinnacle of the running side of my life and she
encouraged me to reach for greatness.
From my 3 AM nervous wake up until I finished the race around 1:20 PM, the
Boston Marathon was something I could think of as the best running experience I
ever had and while I did not run my best marathon time ever I spent every
minute of my 3:15:56 with the goal of reaching for excellence in my mind. Then, even for the first 90 minutes after the
race the day continued to be the best running experience ever. I met up with the two men with whom I’d
traveled to Boston. We all accomplished
what we wanted. We enjoyed some
post-race activities and were preparing to return to our hotel and come home.
That was when the explosions
occurred.
My two friends and I were on
the subway when someone noticed information about the explosion on
Twitter. Everyone reached for their
phones. As information began to emerge,
the subway was evacuated. We were left
wondering about the extent of what happened as multiple emergency vehicles
raced by and needing to find an alternative means to return to the hotel. When we arrived at the hotel more details
emerged. The most heart wrenching of all
the details to come out that afternoon and evening was that an eight year old
boy who had been there to watch his father was one of the three fatalities
associated with the explosions.
That was difficult for me
because I have an eight year old. While
my own family had never intended to join me in Boston, they could have. And no one could have predicted when the
explosions were going to occur. If my
family had made slightly different decisions and the attack had been planned
slightly differently, that could have been my son.
Reflection on this point led
to an interesting Facebook post exchange with a young woman I had mentored when
she was a student in the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State, where I had
done my undergraduate work. After she
posted about glad for my safety, I posted back, “Thinking of
the development I have seen in you since I mentored you in SHC at PSU and the
way I lead my life (so busy and so full) this is just a reminder to live life
to the fullest EVERY DAY since each of us has no idea when life as a whole or
some important part will be pulled out from underneath us in a way we could
never guess.” After that we shared a
back an forth about how this same sentiment motivated us both and how I could
take at least a little credit for her sharing the sentiment with me.
My life is full because I don’t want to miss anything and I
don’t want my wife and sons to miss anything either. This point was emphasized by the loss of life
not only for the eight year old but also two relatively young other individuals
in the explosions and the many serious injuries that will leave lives changed
forever.
Do I do a lot?
Yes. Is it too much to try to fit
in? Possibly. Do I sometimes wish I had more time to just
sit around? Yes.
However, when I ask myself what I have gained by leading a
full and rich and busy life I find the following. I have found the person I love to spend my
life with (married nearly 21 years now), found multiple personal and community
activities I love to be involved with (running, Sunday school teaching, worship
band at church), found a job I love and have been successful in (full professor
and now vice dean), and brought up three boys who are now 17, 13, and 8 to
experience all that life has to offer them at those ages.
Finishing the Boston Marathon in a near personal best time
gets me past one item that was a long-term goal. However, it was just one goal. I am only 43 and have what I hope are many
years to live and many miles to run before I die. However, if something had happened to me as a
runner on Monday, I would enter whatever comes after life on Earth not worrying
that I had missed something.
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