photo by Arpan
As we see from this most luminous poem by Sri Chinmoy, every day has opportunities of various colors and degrees, like a rainbow. As expected, all of the runners have some bad days and some very good days. The days are so long for them that within each day there are many good and perhaps not so good moments. Even though the outer results may seem steady for some of the runners, the numbers that we see do not truly reflect all the challenges the runners have to endure to get to each daily goal.
Perhaps the best way to reach the daily goals is to run and walk as cheerfully as possible. Here are some of the comments that some of the runners gave as to what makes them happy and what bothers them, or what is the most difficult experience in this race and what are the nicest experiences.
Asprihanal says,”It changes. Sometimes ice cream makes you happy, some music sometimes ….You have good days bad days, just like you have good hours and bad hours….when you have a good day nothing bothers you and when you have a bad day everything bothers you.”
According to Grahak, what he likes the most is in the evening when it cools down and “you get another fresh burst of enery, you have a nice meditation, the traffic goes away it’s much more silent and peaceful… The worst for me in this race has been blisters, I’ve never had blisters on the bottom of my foot before.”
According to Stutisheel “as to bothers, I don’t really know because everything that bothers you, you experience more peacefully, it comes and goes. What makes me the happiest is when I see the standard of the race is more and more high over the years. This is my sixth race, in my first race or second or third I could only dream of reaching 65 miles once in a while but now I am doing it more regularly…I also like the feeling of flight, this time most of the days I am surcharged with quite a bit of energy, good food, a lot of jokes and positive things…”
Purna-Samarpan says, “In the beginning I was definitely frustrated that I could not run the pace that I wanted to…but after two weeks I accepted it and then I became happy again. It’s a good performance anyway, even if I run 50 miles every day, who would do that for 50 days…Also the feet and the physical things bothered me but the main problem was the frustration for the ego and the mind. I am not used to that normally, when I am in a race I am not last. So that is a new experience, it made me humble also. It also made me happy when I could accept that and just run whatever I can.”
According to Rupantar, the main Race Director, “I enjoy the opportunity for self-transcendence in my own life. The hardest thing is to maintain that attitude.”
These are just a few words by some of the runners out of the many possible answers that can be given by all of the runners. Each person has his or her share of experiences as they aspire constantly towards a lofty goal. As in all of our lives, as long as we have worthy goals to reach, we undoubtedly we will have very difficult and at the same time very encouraging and uplifting experiences.
My feeling from this race is that cheerful perseverance and unswerving focus on the goal are the two main qualities that can keep us on track and ‘in the race’. All the runners are learning this quite nicely and teaching us all at the same time. This race indeed offers ‘rainbow-opportunities’ for all who wish to experience it in any way, shape or form.