I sometimes kinda picture myself as an AARP badass. I am in
my sixties running ultra-marathons and rugged trail races. Not something that
many people do my age or even at any age. I have run through snow, rain, and
mud so sloppy that I can’t see my feet. I love it. Because when I am doing
these things I feel so alive.
I believe that to do these things you have to have an inner
grit and toughness. Obstacles appear on a regular basis testing your will to go
on. The ability to overcome the obstacles makes me feel like a so called “badass”.
I thought that it was completely an inner will power that I had nurtured
completely on my own. I was pretty impressed with myself until the moment
occurred when I realized that I was full of shit! That occurred in a hospital
emergency room. It was then I realized that maybe genetics may have played a
role in my badassiness.
I was in the emergency room with my 95 year old mother. Waiting
patiently for all her test results to come in and tell us what was wrong. It
was over six hours and her patience with the wait had reached its limit. When
the doctor came in to discuss her condition. At one point the doctor asked her
“How was your walking right before you came here?”
My mother quickly responded “Fine no problem. No cane, no
problem.”
The doctor was pleased with her answer and then was going to
make plans to discharge her.
After the doctor left I said “Mom that does not jive with
what Denise (my sister) told me.”
She looked at me and said “I know but I wasn’t going to tell
her that!”
She wanted to get discharged and she knew what to say.
That wasn’t the first time I had blatantly observed my
mother lie to a medical doctor over her condition. On another time after she
had been hospitalized she was seeing her general practitioner. The doctor asked
her “How is your appetite? Are you eating enough?” She responded in the
positive “Yes I am eating normally.” Now I knew at the time, that this was not
true at all. I interjected “Mom that’s not true! You are not eating.” She
responded by kicking me in front of the doctor for tattling on her. She was 92
years old at the time.
The point is not that my mom is a bad patient. In fact later in the emergency room we came clear with the doctor and she was admitted as a patient.
No, it is that I just realized how she is always pushing
forward thinking that she will persevere. A positive outlook that she will get
through some tough things. Believe me that later in life she has had some tough
times with her health but she always pushes forward. She is amazingly very alert
and with it, particularly at 95.
Maybe it is that generation. She was part of the “Greatest
Generation” that lived and grew up in the Great Depression and World War II. My
father was also that way. Always pushing forward and never giving in, until cancer
took him at age 84.
This is not a happy go lucky type of optimism that ignores
the obstacles but focuses on overcoming the obstacles. Looking back I noticed
that they both employed this attitude in all aspects of their life not just
their health. Both working hard to raise a family while high incomes were not
easy to come by.
It is funny I did not really dwell on my mom’s toughness and
dogged determination until I began reflecting on how I get through some tough
runs. Some of my fellow runners were always impressed not with my speed, gait,
gear, or my strength. I really do not stand out in any of these areas. What
they would complement me on, was my determination. Many others would stop
running and not push themselves when the weather or terrain got bad. I just
took the obstacles as a challenge to overcome, just like my parents persevered
through life.
Now I know that my greatest athletic asset is this dogged
determination, which is not completely of my own making but comes from my
mother. Someone who you would not be associated with rigorous physical
activity. She is well under five feet tall and all of 90 pounds. Yet she is the
toughest person I know.
While I am very happy and proud that I have inherited my
mother’s toughness for my runs I am even happier that these traits are even
more valuable in everyday life. That is because everyday life sometimes throws
obstacles at you that are tougher than any trail race.
As I write this I am once again in a medical facility
waiting for my wife to come out from a routine medical procedure. On the
television in the waiting room is some morning talk show that I have never
heard of, but then again most week day mornings I work and if I am off, either
running or doing a chore. Ironically the
guest who comes on is the author of the book You are a Badass, Jen
Sincero. I am too far away to follow the conversation closely but then again I
don’t need to. I don’t need to read a book to learn how to be a badass. I have
my mother.
