The Race of Life

There is an African Proverb that goes.....

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle awakens.

He has only one thought on his mind: To be able to run faster than the fastest lion. If he cannot, then he will be eaten.

Every morning in Africa a lion awakens.

He has only one thought on his mind: To be able to run faster than the slowest gazelle. If he cannot, he will die of hunger.

Whether you choose to be a gazelle or a lion is of no consequence. It is enough to know that with the rising of the sun, you must run. And you must run faster than you did yesterday or you will die.

“This is the race of life."

A few weeks ago I was watching the movie Higher Learning. Not to go into too much detail, the lead actor was an All-American collegiate track star. He was in the office of his academic advisor complaining about how difficult it was to be in school, be an athlete, and be being black.

He told his advisor he was ready to quit school. The advisor says to him:

You are a runner, a big time track star!

What happens when you get to the race and you suspect that the opposing team has a runner, that is bigger, faster, stronger, and more big-time than yourself? What do you do then? Do you leave the track???

He replies, “Heck no, I RUN FASTER!”

We can all run faster, we all must run faster:

We RUN FASTER because we know that we can, we know that anytime we are giving all of our effort we can win the race.

We RUN FASTER because we have to at least be able to tell ourselves that we tried, we can’t accept defeat without trying, if we fail we know we have to keep trying harder

We RUN FASTER because we know you don’t always win because you are the strongest, or the fastest, or even the smartest. The winner is the one that has the most heart.

The film has a very simple message, if at any time we are giving any less than our best, I mean everything that we have, we are cheating ourselves.