Meaning, Purpose & Passion: In my time, that’s what running has extended to us all. For in taking on the difficult task, we learn to engage with difficulty itself, adapt to its challenges, and come to learn something new about ourselves along the fence line called Running. And so…

With so much in opposition all around us, 

When everyone is against this thing or that, 

And the ties that once bound us in union, 

Hang tattered, threatening to trip us off track, 

We come upon the TCS NYC Marathon, 

This grand, democratizing event, 

To renew our faith in what’s possible, & 

Reconnect us with what we best represent. 

Revealing those qualities that make us all human, 

Each in our own flawed way,

As we strive to ennoble our station,

While holding time’s ravages at bay. 

By taking on this difficult pleasure, 

That no amount of money can buy, 

That can only be earned by the doing, 

Even as cynics continue to ask why.

But to those who take up this Challenge, 

Knowing fully it’s quixotic at best, 

Fruition won’t be found at the finish, 

Nor when medals hang proudly upon chests. 

But in reckoning with their own limitations, 

Neither seeking to dismiss nor deny, 

But instead  to engage with in full measure, 

With thousands of like travelers, whereby, 

In passing through this arc of five boroughs, 

Sharing only in the language of stride, 

They come to the simple understanding, 

I am you, you are me, side-by-side. 

And thus we return to where we started, 

Where challenges lie great for us all, 

But now stripped of preconceived notions,

Of what should be,

Or could be, our fall, 

We come to gauge the depths that will define us, 

To reconsider what we thought we could do, 

As we scan ahead the Horizon, 

For new windmills to come tilting into view.

END