The most compassionate child

So, I sit teary eyed once again.  I just watched Noah drive away on a play date to Chuck E Cheese.  He's been there before, so it's not a huge deal.

But, earlier this year our preschool had an ice cream social.  A mom came up to me in tears herself and asked if I was Noah's mom.  I said yes and she hugged me and thanked me.  Her son is autistic and requires an aide with him everywhere he goes.  He is 5.  He had been talking about Noah since the school year started and his mom thought Noah was an imaginary person because James has never before made a friend or talked about another person.  When she realized at the ice cream social that Noah was a real child and James had made his first friend she was stunned.  She didn't think he would have friends.  Noah ran up to him and asked him to go look at the books together.  They sprinted off like boys do. 

She came up to me later at the church and asked if she could take the boys on a playdate.  James' first playdate ever.  She chose Chuck E Cheese because it was public so that if James had a problem or an outburst Noah would still have something to do.  

I asked Noah's teacher what they were like in class and she said that Noah is always including him and making sure he has a turn or going to play with him when he is alone.  She said most kids are afraid of him or are so self driven (which is normal for 4 year olds) but Noah is always looking out for others.  I was so happy to hear this about my little guy. 

So, they just drove off and I know it will be great.  I hope and pray we can continue to foster this compassion and love for his whole life. 

Born to run

A few months into my training, I was telling my friend Erin about how I needed some mental motivation and she encouraged me to read the book, Born to Run.  I checked it out of the library and found another friend was reading it as well.

It was a fascinating peek into the world of running, but from a different angle.  There is a tribe in Mexico called the Tarahmura who live in canyons far from civilization and they run everywhere they need to go, hundreds of miles a week or more.  The book took a look at this tribe and compared the natural running nature of this tribe to the running culture in the USA.  They compared the consistently injured and bruised runners to these pain free and emotionally stable people and wondered why we struggle and it is so easy for them.

From the shoes we wear to our diets and our mental focus, it was amazing to see the vast differences and how we truly injure ourselves.  We run to achieve miles, diet, fitness, time... in some way we run for a goal, a finish.  The Tarahmura run for their existence, effortlessly and for fun. 

As always, I wanted to jot down some quotes to remember before I take the book back.  If you have any interest in running, READ IT!!!!

p. 97
Let us live so that when we die, even the undertakers are sorry.  Z found a way to run so that when he won, other teams were delighted.  You can't pay someone to do anything with infectious joy. 

p.98
Was Z a great man who happened to run or was he a great man because he ran? ...  there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love running.  The engineering was certainly the same:  both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you got, being patient and forgiving and undemanding.  Sex and speed -- haven't they been symbiotic for most of our existence as intertwined as the strands of our DNA? We wouldn't be alive without love; we wouldn't have survived without running; maybe we shouldn't be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other.

the more he examined the compassion link, the more intriguing it became... was it just a chance that Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela (who ran 7 miles a day in his jail cell in place)....a tribe of natural born runners. 

Perhaps all of our troubles -- all of the violence, obesity, illness, depression and greed we can't overcome -- began when we stopped living as running people.  Deny your nature and it will erupt in some other, uglier way. 

imagine the payoff... What if you could run for decades and never get injured? and log hundreds of weekly miles and enjoy every one of them and see your heart rate drop and your stress and anger fade away and your energy soar?  Imagine crime and cholesterol and greed melt away as a nation of running people finally rediscovered its stride. 

p. 253 
But I had another reason to put my money on Scott.  During hte last, hardest miles of the hike, he kept hanging back with me and I'd wondered why.  He'd come all this way to see the best runners in the world so why was he wasting his time with me?  ... The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other he understood, but to be with each other.  ... it's easier to get outside of yourself when you're thinking about someone else.