My First Post Boston Marathon Blog--Living Life to the Fullest

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. 

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. 

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. 

Thoughts on Choices--Part 3 of 3

The first two parts of my thoughts on choices this week related to my reflections on Robert Frost poems  that could help me consider the choices I have made and will have to continue to make.  The third part s a brief thought on something that Father Sam said at mass on Sunday.  He was once again pointing to the new Pope's actions. He pointed out that the new Pope is apparently not into titles and simply prefers to be referred to as the Bishop of Rome.  He has done many things to demonstrate his interest in the community. He has reached out to the most vulnerable.  And he has called on the church to build community.  

The Bishop of Rome's call to build community within the church and for the church to reach out to the surrounding community in ways that it has not for quite some time is different in many ways from my efforts to build community within the place where I work, and yet there are still similarities.  Within the context of the job I hold, the students are effectively the weakest and most vulnerable.  And my focus is on building a community that will support them.  And as long as I keep my eyes on that, that should guide me to hopeful and helpful actions. 

Thoughts on Choices--Part 2 of 3

So, yesterday I talked about The Road Not Taken. Of all of Frost's poems that and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening are probably the two that everyone knows.  There are many others.  One that I memorized in either eighth or ninth grade and that has stuck with me ever since is Mending Wall (http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html).  It is about a wall that does not need to exist and how the narrator asks his neighbor why they need the wall and the neighbor just repeats the mantra "good fences make good neighbors."  But the poem begins "Something there is that doesn't love a wall."  And in the end it is about the tension between that something and the mantra of someone wanting to construct walls whether they are needed or not.  Walls create barriers.  Barriers are sometimes useful.  But I like to cross barriers.  I like to tear down barriers.  One of my colleagues is clearly a "wall person".  Let's draw boundaries. This is for you to worry about over here and this is for me to worry about over there.  Do we need clear ideas of who is responsible for what?  Of course we do.  But I like to look beyond and seek to knock down the walls, take away the barriers, and work together for good on both sides of the wall.  Perhaps we need a little of each.  And there have been times in my life when I definitely was more of a "wall person".  But at this point I clearly identify with the something that doesn't love a wall.  And it drives many of the choices I make about what drives me, what drives my career, what drives my communication, and how I want to interact with others in my career.  

Thoughts on Choices--Part 1 of 3

After writing yesterday I went for a run.  And, as I do on many runs, I pondered.  Sometimes my pondering leads to new haiku.  Sometimes pondering leads to reflection on other things.  In this case, it led to reflection on someone else's poetry.  In particular Robert Frost.  In thinking about my haiku on choices that challenge what others think--either about life in general or about me specifically--my mind drifted to the poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken.  I realized that many of my choices could be thought of as roads not taken by others.  What was interesting was where my conclusion about this ended up yesterday morning.  The poem ends, "And that [referring to the choice of one way over another] has made all the difference."  I used to interpret that as "And that has made things so much better for me."  While the poem's tone is definitely a happy one (by my read), Frost never said, "That has made me better" or "That has made my life better."  He said simply that the choice had made all the difference.  So, my previous somewhat haughty interpretation of "And that has made me better" (and it was usually better than someone else and not even necessarily simply better than I would have otherwise been), seems at odds with the actual conclusion of the poem.  The choices I make don't necessarily make me any better than anyone else.  They do make me different.  They do provide me with a different set of opportunities.  They do provide me with a different set of chances to realize the opportunities I have.  But making different choices doesn't make me any better or any worse than anyone else necessarily.  It just makes me and my life story unique.  And realizing how much I'd like to stay away from judging and taking unnecessary pride in the difference rather than simply stating, "I took a different path to get here" when asked and otherwise leading by example is a key thing for me to remember.  The interesting thing about leadership is that leading by example remains a key part of leadership no matter how high one goes.  But leading only by example becomes more difficult as the number and magnitude of things on which one has to provide leadership and management grows.

Choices

A Haiku about Choices

Those around me find

Some of the choices I make

Challenging to get

Why do I write this haiku?  First of all, I find haiku to be a useful poetry format.  No need for a rhyme but the ideas have to be put in a very concise format.  And I can play with some interesting ideas and ways to express things that may have multiple meanings.  This is not one of multiple meanings.  This is one that relates to the fact people have found some of my choices challenging.  Not that they disagree with them.  Just that they find them hard to understand.  Running a marathon.  Getting a tattoo.  The job change.  Going outside my confort zone on many things in my early 40's.  Why not just keep doing what I've been doing and know well?  And how does all of this help me.  It does not lead to much disagreement.  Just lots of interesting conversation.  With many people in many roles in many different contexts in life.

All It Takes is a Little Yeast

I have loved making yeast bread for years.  I have written about making yeast bread for years.  I have thought about the symbolism of making yeast bread for years.  As I am headed from day 1 at my new job into day 2 at my new job, I think about the yeast I just put in my single-rise whole wheat bread.  It was just a little yeast.  The recipe is designed to only have to rise once rather than twice.  And yet the product that comes from it is good.  Sometimes in life all we need is a little bit of something to help an opportunity grow and it turns into something amazing.  Life is good that way.  Another aspect of this particular morning's single-rise whole wheat bread is that I put in chia seed rather than wheat germ.  I had forgotten that the last of our wheat germ was lost a while ago and I have not made a whole wheat bread in a while.  So, I quickly looked up potential substitutes for wheat germ online and found seeds to be one.  This should be an interesting bread.  It symbolizes not only the fact that a little starter can go a long way toward making opportunity grow but also the adaptability that is sometimes necessary.  

Easter Mass

Just a quick note today.  Father Sam had his walker at church toda.  I worry about his health.  However, it was not the fact that he was using his walker that caught my attention the most.  What caught my attention the most was his multiple efforts to make everyone feel welcome.  He said that he was not concerned about people showing up only once in a while.  He mentioned that not everyone may be fully engaged.  But he noted that everyone is welcome.  What a wonderful message.  What a gift--on the day we celebrate the greatest gift of all from God.  

Music also went quite nicely today.

It will be interesting to see how St. Pius X as a parish and the Catholic church as a whole under the new leadership can continue to make people feel welcome.