Today
I had the distinct honor of coaching high school track and field for forty years. Thousands of kids ran, jumped, and threw on my teams. Some struggled, some were average, and some were champions. One athlete won the state and set records that still stand. Others were close to those achievements, striving to be the best. I asked all of them one thing: to work to be better than they were.
Track is like that. You compete against others, sometimes against the best there is, but you always, always, compete against yourself. And that is what makes it special; it doesn’t require a competitor to measure your own effort and success. Even if you are the “worst” you can still be better than you were yesterday. And if you are the best, you can still have a reason to be even better.
Don’t Wait
The advice I often gave those athletes was; “Strive today, because no one can promise tomorrow”. When you have the opportunity to do something special and extraordinary, don’t fail to make the most of it. As you float down the track in the 100 meters, the fastest in the field, don’t miss the chance to go even faster. Tomorrow isn’t promised; a hamstring injury in the prelims might end your season.
When you soar over the crossbar at 15’, don’t let the wind distract you from going even higher. It might be the one time that all of the random forces, including luck, are at your back. You might only have this one chance to set a record, to reach your dreams. Don’t depend on tomorrow, it isn’t promised.
When you run the fastest 400 in school history, don’t suffer that someone was even faster in the field. Tomorrow pneumonia might strike, and your season is over.
Focus on today, on now, on this moment. Achieve it now. Tomorrow isn’t promised.
As the coach, I was there for many athletes who strived today and hoped for a tomorrow to fulfill their dreams. For a chosen few, the gift of tomorrow came, and they achieved all that they hoped. And yet, even for them, there was still that self-competition. They might have been better than everyone else, but they were not yet better than themselves.
Tomorrow’s Gone
Today, many of those athletes are finding out there is no tomorrow. It’s all for the right reasons: the United States is in a desperate race against the Corona-Virus. It is an odd race, one we will certainly lose. But if we lose it slowly enough, we can actually win. We must reduce social contact. We must save lives by saving space in hospitals. It’s our duty, as a nation.
But it doesn’t make it easier for those athletes, who are giving up their dreams.
There is the story of the 1980 American Olympians, many the best in the world at what they did. They trained their whole lives simply for the chance to compete, and for some, to win a medal. But the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and the Olympics were in Moscow. My former boss, President Jimmy Carter, determined that the US team should not compete in the capital of an invading nation. The cause was right, but the impact on those Olympians lasted a lifetime. They lost their chance at the dream.
There are few future Olympians running for the team I once coached today. But there are some alumni training on their college teams, who just lost their NCAA championship chance. I know them; they will put their heads down and move onto the next goal. That’s who they are, and how they’ve been trained. But they will never forget, and they will always regret losing this tomorrow.
Do Your Duty
In the larger scale, everyone knows what’s right. Everyone knows that, to quote Commander Spock, “the good of the many outweighs the good of the few”. We will weather this onslaught of Corona-Virus, in six months or a year. And we will have a vaccine for this disease inside of two years. Corona-Virus will become another in the list of world pandemics that burned through, then faded away.
I explained smallpox vaccination to a class of eighth graders. It’s a disease that exists only in germ warfare labs today, extinguished by science. I reached to my shoulder to show them that mark of “ancientness,” a scar from the vaccination for a disease they’ve hardly heard of. So too will Corona-Virus be.
But it won’t change the individual losses, both to those that don’t survive the onslaught, and those who give up their dream that others may live. We must be a nation of purpose. But don’t hold it against the few who will do their duty, if they mourn the loss of their tomorrow.
