There's a quote from Winston Churchill that roughly paraphrased goes something as follows "If a young man is not a liberal then he has no heart; if an old man is not conservative then he has no brain". This touches on the rather idealistic stance of those who lack in pragmatic evidence to the contrary. One can look at almost anything in life and see that if all things were optimal they would be different; in effect life's not always fair.
Being able to deal with the inequalities of life is something that comes with time. Instead of whining about the various problems of the world it's far more effective to find the most optimal way of dealing with sub-optimal situations. At times life serves you a shit sandwich and the best way to deal is to eat.
In the aftermath of any unfortunate circumstance there are exactly two ways of dealing with it (a) as best as possible (b) anything else. Getting down, being depressed, turning to drugs, drinking obscene amounts of alcohol, doing nothing, and slowly self imploding are all examples of option b. There comes a time where you simply can stop feeling sorry for yourself and deal.
The best analogy I have for it is a prize fighter. Regardless of how many times you get hit, how fast the punches come you keep moving. You dance around it, you stay on your feet, you do not let the final blow come down. You tire it out slowly, methodically, you literally bend life until it's worn thin and gives in. And then you knock it out.
It's a violent comparison, but life does not occur without action. I could be drinking my ass off and not really running or being otherwise destructive. I could give up. I could say woe is me and blame everything else for my failure to succeed. Extraordinary people are measured not in how they perform when things are optimal, but how they fare when the chips are down. As hard as life may be at times one can simply never, ever give in. This seems to work quite well with the concept of the marathon due to the hardship one must suffer for an extended period of time before relief; delayed gratification has a way of building character in Americas I-Want-It-And-I-Want-It-Now mess of a society. Quitters never win.
All of this brow beating is hardly a diatribe of how I've excelled and risen above and all that. It's more just a lifelong progression of climbing the mountain that was destined for me to climb; the maturation process and aging and growing up and all that crap that we hate but need. One things for sure, I'm not bowing out now or throwing in the towel. I intend to make some good come from this all.
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Did 3 * 2 miles in the park this morning with 2 miles of jogging in between. 11:03, 10:46, 10:34. Went well, felt good.
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