Once upon a time, I was a runner. Well, to be specific, I was fast. I could sprint and win. There's a difference between runners and sprinters, I know that now. But I was young in sports, and it was before there was such pressure on kids to find their passion and excel.
My best friend, Holly, and I were cheerleaders for a while, then we decided we'd run instead. I remember running down her road, out in the country in February. In Ohio. It's cold in February in Ohio, but we were going to be serious athletes. So we ran in good and bad weather, the off fake-spring and in the blizzard like snow. We ran.
I really hadn't put it together, but it's likely I could have gone far, metaphorically speaking, running my way through college. It surely wouldn't have been an academic scholarship, but I could have found a way to participate at school. Cecil, my near like sister, had run at both U of F and at WKU, where I later attended school. I had a role model and plenty of influence from both my cousin Greg and Curt.
But a car accident slowed me down for a season. I was briefly unbuckled, putting on extra socks to go skating and we slid on ice. It was a painful accident, kept me hobbling for a while. I'm sure it worried my parents, but slowly my gait improved and I began to show that things would be normal again. I never officially ran again. I participated, but had moved to another school and high school athletics has rules in place. I wouldn't have time to officially compete to create reason for schools to look at me.
Fast forward. What do you do with a life experience like this. What thoughts can I build around it that do not waste this life experience in regret. How can I picture this to grow and thrive from it. For a while, it's been put away. Literally tucked away next to my summer camp first place blue ribbon. But today I pulled that out to. There's a reason to keep scraps of the past. There's a reason to look at it and look at the potential of confidence that could have been. What if.. What if I had gone all the way, and what if my life had been entirely different, driven by athletics and scholarships. What would I have studied, who would I be today.
Like many young people, I did and would have struggled with 'my passion,' and therefore, perhaps my commitment would have sustained that same level of uncertainty. But today, I'm scooping up that unlocked potential. Metaphorically, I'm gathering up the shoelaces on my spikes and declaring there's more race to be run.
Andrew Kern of Circe Institute and long time influence in the lives of many Classical Education Enthusiast, recently shared this thought on Substacks.
I don’t care what you are passionate about. I want to know what you are committed to. The passion will support your commitment, but only if it passes the test. Passions without commitment come and go like waves and winds. Passions transformed into commitments undergo and overcome like waves that transform rocks to sand. So I take it back: I care what you are passionate about, but only if you are so passionate about it that, when the energy of the passion subsides, the power of the commitment sustains it and, when the power of the commitment subsides, the energy of the passion renews it.
Be Your Future Self Now by Dr. Benjamin Hardy offers brilliant direction and guidance on how to harness this combination. Capturing that energy, even of what ifs of actual experiences gone wrong, can be exponentially powerful. What if I had taken another path, and didn't default into a career that was just within reach, easy. That's a lot of what-ifs. But what I take away is that imagining what can or could have happened can empower the vision right in front of you-- in the NOW.
For now, I'm using the passion and fueling the days with habit and commitment, when the fire isn't burning as brightly. Set a course. Stick with it. Run the race. It's not sexy. It's just following a plan until it begins to fuel the future. It creates confidence-- the memory of success. It's possible. And today, I'm here for it.
