Imagine Who We Can Be – Ultra-Marathoners
The ultra-marathon I invite us to imagine is not one that requires us to run an extraordinary distance or time. It is an ultra-marathon to defend our democracy at this moment and for the future.
Just as it takes extraordinary endurance to run an ultra-marathon, it also requires extraordinary care of one’s body and mind.
I invite us to focus on extraordinary self-care of our body and mind as we engage in this ultra-marathon to save our democracy!
Listening to a recent podcast interview with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, the author of Make Change That Lasts, inspired this month’s post. He proposes four pillars of health – food, movement, sleep, and relaxation.
During his discussion of the first pillar, food, Dr. Chatterjee, introduced what he refers to as his “3-F” strategies. The more I listened, the more I became convinced that these strategies apply to far more than food. They are small but important steps that will help us go the distance on our extraordinary ultra-marathon to protect our democracy.
F #1 – Feel: pause and notice what you are feeling physically and emotionally. If the challenge were about food, it might be the feeling of wanting to indulge in a bag of chocolate-covered popcorn just before we go to bed. If the feeling is one of total despair about the future of our democracy, we may want to engage in one more hour of MSNBC or doom-scrolling before we go to bed.
F #2 – Feed: Chatterjee invites us to explore how our action feeds our feeling. What will that bag of popcorn feed? What will that hour of MSNBC or doom-scrolling feed? (I’m a huge fan of many of MSNBC’s journalists so I get feeling the need to feed my sorrow at the daily atrocities committed by the president and his cronies.)
F #3 – Find: Find an alternative behavior that will feed what you are truly feeling. What is a healthier alternative to a late-night bag of popcorn? What is the alternative to one more hour of news or media?
What if that one more hour of media was replaced by actions like calling our Senators or Representatives – nationally, state-wide, or even more locally? Last month I shared the app 5 Calls
What if we engaged in really great self-care to have the energy to take even small steps the next day?
What if we reminded ourselves that sprinting is not how we go the distance in a marathon, let alone an ultra-marathon?
What if we recalled the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. that I paraphrase here? “The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of each human as a human.”
What if we remember the words of Joan Baez that I shared last month? “We Shall Overcome” is not about one big act that ends a war. It’s about the small steps we take every day, over and over to fight to preserve our democracy and protect our planet.
We shall overcome through our acts of moral beauty and collective effervescence!
Let us imagine the best of who we can be on this day and every day in the years ahead as we take each small step on this ultra-marathon.
We can imagine something bigger than ourselves!
