Each morning I go for a walk to the edge of the sea.  There are some massive sandbags on the beach about a kilometre from my house, and that is where I stop and meditate.  The bags are meant to stop erosion but really, they are an ugly blemish on the pristine North Queensland beach.  They do have some benefits though – they are the perfect height to climb up and know that you might just be far enough away from the crocs to think you could get out of the way if one was feeling a bit hungry.

Today, instead of meditating in solitude, there was a man fishing.  I almost left to find somewhere else, but decided that there was enough space for both of us, so after checking to see if he was OK with someone intruding on his quiet space, I sat down and took a few deep breaths to settle into meditation.

Except we got to talking. 

We pretty much put the world to rights, and had a good laugh about many things, but there were two points in the conversation that were worth digging a little bit deeper into.  One thing was about an ambition he’d had for many years, and had decided that he was not going to eventually die without at least giving it a go.  That ambition was to run a marathon. 

First, he did his research and worked out which route in all of Australia was the flattest.  That happened to be the Gold Coast Marathon, so he committed himself to taking part – and committed himself to running it.  He bought shoes.  Then he started running and discovered that he really doesn’t have the right body-shape for running.  He’s a blend of mesomorphic and endomorphic somatotypes.  In other words, he’s not very tall, has broad shoulders and short legs.  His body is built for strength, not endurance, and to run a marathon, endurance is what is needed.

Very determined, he went running most days – and discovered that he HATED it.  Running was definitely not his thing!  But he’d made a commitment to himself – and he’d bought the shoes, so over the next six months he continued his training.  He finally ran the race and came in with a very respectable time of just over four hours.  He told me that he’d have cracked the four hours if he hadn’t stopped for a cigarette in the middle!!! 

What did he do when he got to the finish line?  He took those shoes off and put them in the rubbish bin. 

It’s a wonderful story, and for me it tells of the power of determination – and of knowing when is the right time to quit.  This fisherman had an ambition that was so far out of his comfort zone it was laughable (just ask his mates at the pub – they laughed their socks off when he first mentioned it), but he was aware that the years were passing and that if he didn’t try now, he’d have to acknowledge that this would be one ambition that would never be realised and – most importantly – he would forever be disappointed in himself. 

Everything was stacked up against him.  His age, his fitness level, the fact that he smoked and that his friends thought it was a huge joke.  But he bought those shoes.  They became the symbol of his determination and each day as he put them on, they became the driving factor in achieving his dream. 

But he also discovered that the dream and the reality are not necessarily on the same page.  I suspect that the dream hadn’t included how very hard it is to persevere in rolling out of bed and going running, especially when it is something almost alien to everyday life.  The dream would not include recovery from tired and aching muscles and joints; and it would definitely not have included how tempting it would be to simply give up.  And to be honest, that’s what I would have done even though I am not a stranger to heavy fitness training regimes. 

I suspect that this fisherman came to hate those shoes and all the represented:  the sweat, the aches and pains, the injuries, the tears.  And that, I also suspect, is why the shoes went in the bin!

There is no doubt that he had set himself an almost impossible task, and many of us aim to metaphorically climb mountains, but how many of us actually hold the determination and commitment to see it through to completion.  At one time, when I was much younger, I thought I did; and I pushed many boundaries as an elite athlete, but ultimately my determination was not one tenth of what it took this middle-aged man of average fitness to live his dream.  It was hard for sure, but how many of us can stand tall and know that you took a dream and made it real – and carried it through even when you discovered that the dream and the reality were on opposite sides of a coin.

Now the fisherman can stand tall and tell a stranger – not in words, as most of this story was in the undercurrents – that he took an ambition, a lifetime dream, and made it real.

PS – the other story was of the idiots who come to our beaches and disregard the warning signs about crocodiles.  There are a few tales to be told there too!