I’m grateful.
Lots of you have written in to say you appreciated the idea about asking your team or family about how you can be a better person. It’s certainly a clue about how to finish well.
However one unhappy camper wrote:
Thanks a lot Mr Colin Pearce, Last week you told me to ask someone near me, ‘What can I do to be a better person as far as you are concerned?’ Well I asked the wife. It’s now Wednesday and she hasn’t stopped telling me.
Mitch Wright, Staff Development Officer, Manager Beaumont Bathrooms
He’s a good mate and I am sure he’ll get over it. So I am really sorry Mitch. (Not!)
A good read
I’ve been reading a good book by my favourite author – me. It’s This Glorious Quest which I wrote in 2000 after the Siddeny Olympics. It’s got some really good stuff in it. (I can say that because I had forgotten what I’d written.) If you want one you can get one at https://www.colinpearce.com/shop
A bit from the book.
Ethopian Mamo Wolde won the Gold Medal in the marathon in the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City. More than an hour later, Tanzanian runner John Stephen Akhwari hobbled into the almost deserted Olympic Stadium. In great pain, a bloody bandage on his right leg was a testament to a fall he had taken along the course. Only a handful remained to applaud Akhwari as he staggered to the finish, last of the 57 runners to cross the line. Later, when asked why despair and exhaustion did not make him give up, Akhwari said, “My country did not send me 7,000 miles to start the race. They sent me 7,000 miles to finish it.”
My country did not send me 7,000 miles to start the race. They sent me 7,000 miles to finish it.
Get up and Finish the Race
This is the last part of a long poem about a boy who enters an important race and desperately wants to win it. He has fallen three times and each time his dad has urged him to get up and finish. When I wrote the book Google wasn’t very effective and I couldn’t track the author but I can gladly acknowledge now that the writer is Dr D. H. (Dee) Groberg whose beautiful book of images and the poem is available at Amazon.
Defeat! He lay there silently, a tear dropped from his eye.
‘There’s no sense running any more – three strikes, I’m out – why try?’
The will to rise had disappeared, all hope had fled away,
So far behind, so error prone, closer all the way.
‘I’ve lost, so what’s the use?’ he thought. ‘I’ll live with my disgrace.’
‘Get up’, an echo sounded low, ‘Get up and take your place.
You were not meant for failure here, so get up and win the race.’
With borrowed will, ‘Get up’, it said, ‘You haven’t lost at all
For winning is not more than this to rise each time you fall.’
So up he rose to win once more, and with a new commit,
He resolved that win or lose, at least he wouldn’t quit.
So far behind the others now, the most he’d ever been,
Still he gave it all he had and ran as though to win.
Three times he’s fallen stumbling, three times he rose again,
Too far behind to hope to win, he still ran to the end.
They cheered the winning runner as he crossed, first place,
Head high and proud and happy; no falling, no disgrace.
But when the fallen youngster crossed the line, last place,
The crowd gave him the greater cheer for finishing the race.
And even though he came in last, with head bowed low, unproud;
You would have thought he’d won the race, to listen to the crowd.
And to his dad he sadly said, ‘I didn’t do so well’.
‘To me, you won’, his father said. ‘You rose each time you fell.’
My Kick in the Pants for you: If you are sick of starting over, stop quitting.
