"Did I Win?"

After delivering a speech in San Diego, runners in the audience were asking Sheehan questions that went deeper than training for races. Sheehan responded and wrote:

I was silent for a time. Then, my arms in front of me, palms upward, I looked heavenward and asked, “Did I win?”. It was the question of a schoolboy being asked by someone just a few years short of being truly old. I have spent my entire life playing a game in which I am not sure of the rules or the goal. At this point I was asking of whoever is in charge the big question: “Did I win?”. Although I am seventy something, I still wonder whether I played this game of life well enough to win. It is so difficult to know what really matters. It’s as if all my life was spent studying for a final examination, and I am not sure just what was important and what wasn’t.

If you are, or have been, a Runner, you probably are familiar with Dr. George Sheehan. This post borrows it's title (drumroll) from his short essay titled "Did I Win?" published in the mid-90's. Sheehan ran a 4:47 mile, which was the world's first sub-five-minute time by a 50-year-old.

I planned to share this post in December, when new year resolutions are popular, about a wonderful essay that I read titled "The Brutal Wonders of a Late-Summer Run by Nick Ripatrazone" which led me to the gem written by Dr. Sheehan. While both essays are about "Running", it connected at a much deeper level for me and I think of them as a metaphor to our daily "running at work and life in general".

I'm sure some of us pause and ruminate about our own success and ask "what is the point of this race that we run?", "how far have I come along?", etc. The question we reflect most times is "What will it take for me to succeed?" eventually leading at some point to "Did I Win?" (or Did I succeed?). Sheehan noted and wrote:

Did I win? Does any of us know? Is there anything we have done that assures us we have passed the test? Can we be sure we did our best at whatever it was that we were supposed to do? It is a tough call. Obituaries are filled with achievements that mark those we think of as successful. But obituaries tend to conceal biographies, and those biographies tell us the deficiencies and defeats of even the great and near great.

Like it or not, we live in an age where competition and the way we compete as individuals (or teams if you prefer) is both intense and brutal. The constant need to differentiate, stand-out, outperform and outcompete can wear us down. With experience and wisdom we realize it is less about others and mostly about us. (Or if you prefer the much cliched, "the only person standing in your way is you"). As a runner, and on running, Sheehan wrote:

“It's very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit”

I don't know if there is such a thing as competing at our own pace (or setting the pace). It sounds like a non-starter, lacks ambition and goal-orientation. Not the best way to be taken seriously 'as a Player' I guess. But knowing that each one of us is unique should offer some succour and comfort to our daily grind that we rinse and repeat. Sheehan noted:

Each one of us is an experiment-of-one. Each is a unique, never-to-be-repeated event. Our talents vary. Our defeats are our own. Our environments offer special challenges. We evolve from a constant interaction between instinct and will, between emotions and reason, between environment and good fortune. Life, like it or not, is a handicap event, and the winner may finish deep in the pack.

As Nick Ripatrazone notes in his wonderful essay, running is indistinguishable from life itself. And when you take that metaphor and apply to our work and careers, we may never reach what we run for but the running is the reward (a variant of "it is the journey that is the reward and not the destination").

In his 1975 book The Ultimate Athlete, George Leonard wrote, “We forget: all running is falling”. “What we run for we shall never reach,” he writes with biblical piquancy, “and that is the heart and the glory of it. In the end, running is its own reward. It can never be justified. We run for the sake of running, nothing more.” Running in Leonard’s account is virtually indistinguishable from life itself; it is similarly self-grounding.

"Did I win?". At whatever point we ask this to ourselves in our lives and careers, to each his own - shaped by our own experiences and whatever life threw at us. As Sheehan noted and wrote with ernesty:

"Did I win?" is indeed the question of a schoolboy. It is the question of someone unfamiliar with the rules, someone who doesn’t know the inner workings of the game. But it is also the question of someone who tried as hard as he could. At an age when I should know all the answers, I am still that young boy".

While both Nick's essay that led to the discovery of Sheehan's short essay inspired me a great deal, I should confess it wasn't enough to push me out of my couch to take up Running. I have linked both the essays in my post and I hope they inspire you if your resolution is to take up running seriously and improve your fitness. And sincerely hope it connects with you at a much deeper level as it did for me.

Happy Running!