Humans are gifted by evolution with an ability unrivaled by the animal kingdom’s practical entirety, yet most alive today are oblivious. While in a short sprint, many animals can easily outrun a human, in a hunt that lasted days or weeks, humans emerged victorious. In a 1000-mile race, the only animal that can compete with humans is the Alaskan sled dog. We are built resilient, to outlast, sweat, suffer, survive. Humans evolved specially, to fight through days and nights on our feet, for extreme endurance running.
That instinct to endure still lives in us, even if most people never get the chance – or never choose – to discover it firsthand. Since the beginning, the ability to overcome struggle has been a defining aspect of the human experience. Despite this, we often let our minds give up well before our bodies would; our dreams die in our comfort.
There is one hill, in particular – the run “65th” – that has become my personal measure of struggle. Many days, the miles of concrete and direct sun feel like a punishment from hell. Other days, my hands freeze as I am bombarded with rain, the pathetic beam of my phone’s flashlight the extent of my visibility. I’ve run it tired, in pain and on injured legs. I’ve run it well over 300 times.
Each run is a marker of showing up, again and again, no matter the weather or how lazy I felt that day. Every time, I understand myself more deeply as I cut away the noise of regular life and enter a new world where each stride grounds me with the planet, my mind free of worry or stress over temporary, meaningless things like overdue school assignments.
I run it alongside people who experience their life and the world in contrasting ways to me, who have different religious beliefs, who disagree strongly on political and social matters that I hold so extremely close to my heart that it boggles my mind another person can disagree with them.
And with this experience in mind, I promise any reader with near complete certainty that if you were to run a marathon with a random person on Earth 100 times, you would become best friends with a random person on Earth 100 times.
It is not a coincidence, given the aforementioned evolutionary ability, that proximity and shared struggle are the strongest forces that bond humans. We are wired to grow through collective hardship, but just as deeply through personal battles.
The indomitable human spirit is not just a saying. You do not have to run 65th – and you certainly do not have to run it arguing politics simultaneously. But you do deserve a path in life that tests you, breaks you down and lets you feel what it’s like to reach your absolute limit – and, most importantly, decide to fight past it.
