We Are All Runners

A month ago I wrote about how thrilled I was to finally call myself "a runner". Now I'm nursing a flare-up of plantar fasciitis and find myself unable to run, possibly for weeks. It's driving me crazy.

In the wake of the bombings at the Boston Marathon on Monday, I felt many emotions. The first one was shock and disbelief as I read the headlines while sitting in on my kids' piano lesson. As they plunked away on the keyboard I followed the events in real time, as the bombings had occurred a mere five minutes before the lesson. The second was sadness for the people injured, the ones killed, and the witnesses who will forever be traumatized by the event.

But in the following days I began to feel some hope. Stories of courage and bravery emerged. The human spirit is strong. There is a lot of evil in this world, but I told my son that for every bad person there are at least a hundred good ones. I want my kids to know that the good in people will always trump the bad. It's a difficult lesson to teach when kids are gunned down in their classroom and bystanders at a marathon are killed or maimed by a bomb on what had started out as a glorious day.

Just a few weeks ago my own family stood near the finish line of a race I ran in DC, cheering me on, just as the victims of the bombings had been. It hit a little too close to home.

I can't run right now. My feet hurt. I can't do much of anything because I'm trying to make them better. Lately I haven't been feeling like much of a runner.

But then I realized, in a way, that we are all runners. Running is a lot like life. I'm sure all you non-runners out there are scoffing at this, but it's true.

Running is hard, but it can also be very rewarding.

Sometimes when you are running, you will encounter a steep hill. You look at the hill and you think, I will NEVER make it up this hill. Getting up the hill is hard. It makes you sweat and breathe heavily. Everything hurts. But you press on and you make it. And when you reach the top, it's a glorious feeling. You feel like you can do anything.

Occasionally you will encounter a steep hill, but this time you are travelling downhill. Suddenly running feels really easy. There's not much work involved and gravity is pulling you along. You want to run faster and faster because it's so easy, but you have to try to control your speed or risk hurting yourself.

Most of the time, you are running on flat ground. This is neither hard nor easy, just somewhere in between. You still have to work hard but it's not taxing. You can relax and enjoy your surroundings while still feeling like you are accomplishing something. You can come up with some great ideas while running on flat ground because you don't have to worry about controlling your speed or making it up a big hill. You can just be.

We are all running through life. Right now those people who were gravely injured in the bombings or who lost loved ones are climbing up a big hill. They may feel like they are barely moving, struggling to make it to the top. The top may seem very far away. I pray that they all make it there.