Our why
November 4th in brain day for me. It’s the day I survived brain tumour and subsequently crossed the finish line of the NYC marathon one year later to the day. Still now, and ever luckily so each year, on November 4, I run!
While in rehab, the intensivist doctor would come and ask a few questions with his clipboard. I could hear him coming up around the ICU, through the heart patients, a lung patient, another brain patient, who laughed a lot. I was so frightened. Would I laugh too now, is that me now? What if I think I’m ok but I can’t communicate anymore now I’ve been through such a long (10hours!) and physical ordeal?
He sat on my bed, perhaps seeing my worry. He smiled. I smiled. He poured us a glass of water each. We cheers. ‘Congrats,’ he said. ‘Um, thanks’ I said. I was still so unsure if I was still me. ‘Ok, I’m going to ask you a few questions. Make sure we’ve got the right girl. Is that ok?’ ‘Sure’, still worried: what’s your name, Vanessa, do you know where you are, Sydney…. Then, what’s the day of the week? I don’t ever really know this! ‘I actually don’t know? But I do know it’s the day of the NYC marathon and I’m going to run it next year!’ He looked it up and nodded. ‘100%!’ (I think then it was a Monday, right?). It became our ongoing joke.
Still in hospital I received my email that I had qualified for the NYC marathon the next year! I showed him and he nodded, non committal. But let’s just say I sent him (and my neurosurgeon!) a card with my hub and I crossing the finishing line of the NYC marathon that next year, together (& still married after all that haha) in 3.34 so he knows I did know what day it was!
That year I even qualified for Boston! I’d go on to run another 3 NYC marathons, raising money for the brain tumour foundation of America who allowed my hub to run by my side each year, and then have my son, despite the ‘improbable’ but not ‘impossible’ diagnoses, of which I focused on the latter!) …
But why, I hear you say? I remember my sister called me from somewhere a long way overseas and saying 'if anyone can do this, you can' and it's how I still live. It probably annoys the sh*t out of most people I know but I can't help it. It's not until you're on your second life, and you only realise that you get two lives when you're on the second, that you have to try to be the best at who you are... to impress yourself at least once a year now you've the chance.
We all have our why, and when we find it, ‘practicing’ it over training, working it out over workouts, zoning in over zoning out, letting our burning desires fuel us not our burnout discourage us. Find your ‘why’, align it with systematic ‘what’ and the ‘who’ is yours!
