Showing up

The running club at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center sponsors a semiannual 2 mile “fun run.” In my many years there, I’d run most of the races.

There was a colleague whom I knew mostly from meeting each other twice a year at this race. He was about my age, and we were always in the same age group. There was a period of about five years, the first half of that 10-year age group, in which he and I were consistently the top two finishers. He was faster than me, by about a minute. So, in the age group results, he was always #1 and I was #2.

Except for the two times when he didn’t run, for whatever reason. Each of those two times, when I picked up my certificate for being the top age group finisher, I’d think to myself that this is kind of tainted--#1 with an asterisk (* the faster guy wasn’t there). That I wasn’t really the top finisher for my age group, because there was someone else on campus who was faster and, if he had raced, he would have been the top finisher.

Over time, however, I’ve come to see that there is no asterisk. Because, by the logic of the asterisk, only someone like Usain Bolt, during those years that he was on top of the world, could say that he was the top finisher. There is no asterisk, because, on that day, in that race, I was the fastest in my age group. There could be, and in my case there was, someone else who’s faster. But, they didn’t show up. It doesn’t matter why they didn’t show up, only that they didn’t. This is true of any race, including those at the Olympics.

This is also true of life (for which long-distance running is an apt metaphor).

Woody Allen once said, "80 percent of success is showing up." What did Allen mean by “showing up”? There seem to be two main interpretations. One is literal: 80 percent of success is simply physically showing up at the starting line, be it a race or anything else in life. After all, if one is not there, then there’s zero percent chance of success. The other is metaphorical: showing up intentionally and committing to do deliberate work. The finished work may not be of the desired result, but it provides something to be improved on (one can’t revise a blank page). I think a combination of the two is probably what Allen had meant.

Allen’s quote is like that famous saying found in those wise fortune cookies, “The journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath your feet.” No, actually, it’s from the Tao Te Ching (chap. 64). You have to show up at the beginning of the journey, and you have to show up with the intention to put in the work to take the journey. Similarly, in those two NASA Goddard races, I not only showed up (and the faster guy didn't) but also put in the work to make sure the third fastest guy didn't beat me to the finish line.

In my running life, showing up is part of that eternal question of life: Why I run.

Recently, in my non-running life, an opportunity for “showing up” showed up in my inbox one day in July. The email was from Lorig Charkoudian (MD Delegate District 20), and it began with “We need to show up and keep showing up to build a just and inclusive future—in Maryland, in the United States, and across the planet.” Charkoudian is actually not one of my delegates; I think I got on her mailing list from attending a Third Act Maryland meeting at which she was a speaker. She is also an ultrarunner. So, if she were my delegate, I’d vote for her just based on that (jk, but only partly!).

Anyway, in her email was an invitation to join a Maryland group she was organizing to go up to Pennsylvania to canvass. Something I’d never done before and a bit out of my comfort zone. But, her words stuck in my mind, and I eventually decided to get out of my comfort zone and go find out what canvassing is all about. I decided to “show up,” both literally and, after getting there, go through the training and then knock on doors. The result was not always as desired, but it provided something to be improved on, from door to door and from canvass to canvass.

It was an interesting and fun learning experience, with some eye-opening conversations with my fellow citizens. With less than two months to go before we all decide if we can keep a republic, showing up is all the more important.

Whether in running or in non-running, showing up intentionally is the Tao.