What Is Truly Important

It's so easy to get caught up in the daily running and training grind.  Getting up in the darkness after a late night before and the struggle it is to lace up the shoes (oh, wait, I don't wear any).  It all becomes second nature and at points, boring.  In short, we take for granted the fact that we can run at all.

A friend sent this article to me today.  It tells a story about a true friendship between two Army Rangers.  One, Lance Vogeler, died while in his 12th deployment.  The other, Andrew Wallace, was Sonic the Hedgehog to Lance's Tails.  They had deployed and lived together many a time.  And now, after losing his best friend in life and on the battlefield, Andrew is taking matters into his own hands to help support Lance's family (a wife and three children, one who never met Lance).  He's pledged to run the Boston Marathon barefoot.  Andrew is running, in collaboration with the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, to raise $30,000 for Lance's kid's college educations.  And he's going at it without shoes.  How inspiring!

For me, this story was important because it put a face on an otherwise faceless war that we at home know very little about.  Sure, it made me feel good that I'm not the only crazy person out there running barefoot.  But it's about so much more than that.  It is about realizing that people just like us -- who obsess over seconds gained or seconds lost on a training loop and the newest GU flavor -- risk their lives so I can obsess over those seconds lost (hopefully) whenever I want.  I can do what I love to do because they do what they do. 

Taking a second and thinking about what is truly important -- freedom -- is all I'm asking.  Think about that when you go out on your run today.  Think about what it means to be able to step out onto the street without worrying about whether you'll make it back to your house in one piece.

Note: I wrote this post earlier and as I was driving home, I had several other thoughts that I wanted to put down.  Hopefully you'll read a little bit more...

Although I consider myself a journalist at heart and a fairly knowledgeable person on culture, events and news, I am guilty of not knowing much about either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. I can count on one hand the people I know who are in the armed services - none of them have died.  I personally have no connection whatsoever to war.  Yes, both of my grandpas served, but it was never a big talking point.  Now, as we find the U.S. engulfed in drawn-out conflicts, I wish that I had talked to either one of them about what it was like to serve and what their thoughts were on the situations we are now facing.

Should the media have reported more? Why didn't their embedded journalism and overseas reports bring the war to my front door?  Could they have told a different story that would have made this all more real to me?  Or would I have still chosen to gloss over it and move on to the next story?  Hard to say.  And I don't like placing blame outside myself.

I know war is very political, and my mother always told me that the three things you never bring up amongst friends is salary, religion and politics.  But politics and religion fuel war and hate and misunderstanding.  The two are intertwined to a point that they become hard to distinguish and separate out.  I'm neither Left nor Right...I hate when most people sit on the fence, but that's where I often find myself on politically-and emotionally-charged issues.  I don't feel that war is necessary and believe there are other means to go about changing the world.  But I do support the soldiers and what they do.  It boggles my mind that people would picket outside a soldier's funeral, holding up signs that say "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "You're going to hell."  Where has the common decency of the human race gone?  That's another topic and issue on it's own, though...

What I'm trying to say is that war is such a huge thing that I have a hard time trying to wrap my head around it.  I'm not cutting myself slack nor am I saying it's right. It is a place, a mind-set, a belief, a current event, a THING that I don't fully understand.  I'm hoping, though, to educate myself about war and really ask, what is it good for?