"Get Up and Win the Race"

Is it just me, or were we all born with a giant mountain in front of us? Your mountain might be writing a book, or running a marathon, or raising a family, or becoming a world-famous scientist. My particular mountain seems to have many peaks to it, each of which seems completely unreachable most of the time. Yet, I cannot escape my mountain. It is in front of me all the time. Everything I do reminds me of it, and at the same time, everything also seems to oppose it. The harder I try to climb the mountain, the harder gravity works against me. Then, in the words of DH Groberg's poem, The Race, I hear: “Quit, give up, you're beaten,” they shout at me and plead, “There's just too much against you, this time you can't succeed.”
I could tell the story of my life with that poem. As a musician, a runner, a conductor, a reader, a writer, a mother, a composer, and even a Christian, somewhere, someone has always been behind me with those words of discouragement, trying to tell me that I couldn't do whatever it was that I was trying to do. There are those people in this world who make it their business to tell people when they have failed and to make sure that they don't forget it. I've known dozens of such people, and have heard of hundreds more. Ironically these people are also very adept at finding those whom they consider to be successful and encouraging them to be even more successful. They sometimes masquerade as teachers or friends but when the chips are down, they will always play the favorite. In other words, they might be walking the trail up the mountain with you, but when rocks mar the path they will be the first to say that you are climbing the wrong mountain and had better turn back.
Remember that we are all born with a mountain. I don't think you can climb the wrong mountain. Whatever mountain is in front of you is the one you must climb. Of course, you can choose not to climb. And you can choose to not get up in the morning. But where does that get you? Some people have got it into their heads that you have to have some kind of aptitude, or talent, or predisposition for a certain mountain in your life, otherwise you are just wasting your time. They are constantly testing people to see where their aptitude lies so that they can funnel them into a certain field of endeavor, no doubt so that the economy will run smoothly from year to year. But real experience and real people defy those beliefs. Some of the greatest accomplishments in the history of the world were achieved by people who had to overcome nearly insurmountable obstacles to do it. Fred Astaire was so clumsy all his life, that he decided to take dancing lessons to improve his weakness. Einstein did poorly in school. The man who first broke the four-minute mile barrier was told at a very young age that he would never walk.
There are countless other examples of extraordinarily weak people accomplishing some of the most difficult tasks in the history of man. The trouble is that we think that we are somehow different. We cannot accomplish anything unless we, a) have an amazing talent for it at birth, b) are given all the money and opportunities we need to achieve the goal, and c) we happen to have enough time in our busy schedule to fit it in. How absurd. It is precisely the weakness, inability, and lack of opportunity that gives you the incentive to grow into the challenge and to build the strength to succeed. No one ever climbed their mountain over night. You have to be careful when you look around you. There are some people who appear to have reached the top of a very majestic mountain, and you might envy them. But remember that sometimes, they were put on the top and they didn't have to climb. In that case, their real mountain is still in front of them, and they may be deceiving themselves and others who think that if you have an amazing talent, lots of money and all the time you need, that you have found success. True success, and happiness, is in climbing your own mountain, in your weakness, growing stronger each day battling the winds of adversity, and, like in the poem, whenever you fall, and others tell you to quit, you hear another voice within you that says, “Get up, and win the race!”