"Some people just don't belong." Does that painful statement or ones like it resonate with you? Well last week it rang out loud and clear for one new Spartan. It's not the first time I've seen these kinds of comments on Facebook. It won't be the last. But it was the first time I saw somebody stand up for themselves. Her first words in answer to the accusation were, "I'm one of them." Them. I grew up being one of them. The memories still haunt me. Sometimes it's tough to let go. I applauded her for her bravery. I know she'll be on the course again despite the words of others who feel she doesn't belong.
This week I started training my youngest son for what will hopefully be his first Spartan next year. He is fifteen years old and he is autistic. He can't do one pullup or pushup. His running flags after about two miles although he can clip along at about a seven-minute pace for that much. Does he belong out there? We'll see. In the meantime, he has had a few choice words for the OCRMudmaster.
I reminded him that when I started on my fitness training using P90X, I could not do one pullup and maybe just nine pushups. What I make look easy now was impossible back then. "Yea, back then you were chubby daddy," says my oh so blunt son. Chubby was an extra forty pounds. He remembers. But ouch, those words. We can laugh about it as father and son. But what he doesn't know or understand is the memories that strike suddenly, the rush of shame, the blush of those same chemicals in my body that create tension, fear, and anger. It's the same principle as I wrote about some time ago when yoga teacher showed me how to release body pain from old injuries.
In this case, embrace every bit of those horrible flashbacks - the words, circumstances, feelings, reactions from others like laughs and jeers. Guaranteed if you did that right now you are also experiencing that moment all over again as if for the first time - the tears, fists balling up, wishing you could run and hide, knowing that someday, somehow, you will show them that you are good, better, the best, than the rest of them. But that time may be way in the future, or never. Sometimes these events are so traumatizing that we never let go and never achieve what we truly desire.
But you can. Look deep inside yourself now. Feel it all. Remember it all. Now drop it, forget it, put it all behind you. Because today you are somebody else. You are not a failure. You are not a loser. You are not the last one to be picked. You are not picked on, laughed at, beat up, or whispered about. Now you can look in the mirror and see the winner you wanted to be all your life. Now you see the sweat, the hard work, the hours, days, months, years. You no longer fool yourself like when you first started and all you had was ambition. Now you have results. Now you have what everybody else wants.
The two things you don't have and won't carry around with you though are: one - that old defeated person, and two; a person like those who brought that pain on you so long ago. No, that will never be you. You are an encourager, a team player, someone who belongs. And you want everyone to come along with you no matter who they are or where they are in their fitness training journey.
In my years on the course, I could have been one of those who say, "You don't belong." But then the veteran with one leg would not have gotten up the 14-foot warped wall. But then the team from Biggest Loser would not have gotten over the 6-foot military walls. But then the family of untrained first-timers would not have finished the race smiling and ready to come back for another. The OCRMudmaster encourages you Spartan, TM, WD, BF, to be that person on the course whether as a racer or volunteer who says, "You belong!"
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