Today when sitting down to get to work, I got an email revealing the death of a coworker's wife. Truth be told I didn't even know who it was until I looked up his picture. I saw him, knew I knew him, met his now deceased wife at our company Christmas party, and almost immediately I was struck with incredible grief.
I believe that we all go on, that consciousness continues past the physical death of the body. That we continue is a central belief in many peoples lives, but factually Marilyn is gone today, for my teammate she remains in his mind but is missing in physical presence. This is a difficult thing to handle, to appreciate, to accept. Yet this moment, the last breathe on this planet, is a real moment. A moment we will all experience. Whether or not time actually exists is a valid point, but restricted in our own physical forms time most certainly exists in the context of physical form and there will be a time where it ends.
How to reconcile this? How do I explain these inevitabilites to my children? My plan is to explain it to them like a race. I run quite a bit and hence I race from time to time, so my children are very familiar with this concept. If life is like an ultramarathon then we can know some basic realities. It's going to take some time, a lot of time, to get to the end (been there). You are going to have some incredible highs, where you feel so amazing you want to laugh and cry at the same time. You will have some crushing lows, like you feel like you would rather lay down on the trail and die. You will eat, drink, meet people, sweat, and hurt. When you get to the finish and cross the line you are happy and relived to be done, so long as you gave it your all. That is what I plan on telling my kids, give your everyday everything you've got. Don't stop living until the race is over, don't settle for a DNF in life, get through it and push all the way to the end, because when you cross that plane, there will be relief and happiness, and if you're an ultrarunner with a family you know they'll be there at the end along with all your friends, and usually in the most beautiful place you can imagine.
Love the grind, embrace it all, I'll see you all at the post race.
