We’ve all had the awful sinking feeling. We are in gym class … er physical education class … and we are being picked for teams. We watch as the popular kids get picked first. And with any luck, we will have had a friend who is a cool sports kid, so we don’t have to wait to get picked. But we all have had that moment when the captain of the teams are fighting over who is gonna get stuck with you.
I was talking with a couple of run walkers this week. And they were telling me their motivation for running.
They were the last one picked for the baseball team, the volleyball team … the fill in the blank team. And when you are young and impressionable, you feel the horror, the embarassment of being picked last.
With any luck you outgrow that embarassment and you go on. You get into the career you dreamed of. And it is not work anymore. Sometimes though, people aren’t so lucky and they end up with a job that they hate.
And they still end up being the last kid picked for the baseball team.
Some folks are lucky enough to stumble onto this running thing. They find themselves with a place that they absolutely fit in. They look forward to the times when they can go and hang out with like minded people. They have a second family. They can laugh. They can cheer each other on.
They can also cry.
In the moment when they hear “their” name being called as they struggle to cross the finish line. And they know that someone is there, on the other side waiting. Waiting to make sure that they pick them first for their team.
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