To Inspire

Do you know what it feels like to be completely inspired? I do. It is a feeling that starts right in the middle of your tummy and gushes outwards, forcing enough pressure through your limbs to incite action. You just can’t help doing when you’re truly inspired.

In high school, I would fill notebooks up with everything, usually words, that inspired me. Quotes from movies, like Finding Forrester. Pithy comments from Calvin in Calvin & Hobbes. Bible verses. Poetry. Lyrics. I would fill my pages with other people’s words because more often than not, those words would encourage a flow of my own. These words that I could claim no credit for turned into my own poetry and essays and even, on very rare occasions, works of visual art.

I don’t find inspiration in as many places, these days. I’ve grown a little more jaded and in the midst of all the noise on the Internet and the busyness of my day, I often don’t stop to to take time to find those special parts of life that could inspire me to greatness. Possible inspiration is shared with us daily and yet, it often doesn’t hit the mark, or it does and it quickly fades behind the next thing. But when I find it? Oh, there is nothing like feeling inspired. There’s nothing like feeling that drive to do more and be great and inspire others.

So, I didn’t know what to think as I trudged to my Inspiration Dinner on the night before my half marathon. When something is promised to be inspiring, I already consider it suspect. (I call this “the Upworthy effect”.) I was sure I would enjoy the carb-rich pasta, and would hopefully find a little more camaraderie with my Team in Training travel mates, but I wasn’t expecting much on the Inspiration front. Since we were raising money for cancer research, I expected a few attempts at my heart-strings, but was vowing to remain strong. There’s enough tragedy in life to face it head on like that if I can help it. (Oh, how privileged I am).

I filtered into a ballroom with 618 other Team in Training participants, all in that place because we had trained to run and raised money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada. 619 normal people, who had all come together for one common purpose. As I was sitting at my seat eating, the emcee asked for all of the cancer survivors to come to the front. People started to get up around me. Lots of people. The front of this massive ballroom started filling up with people who had gone through a very personal cancer journey. There weren’t just a five survivors, nor ten, nor twenty. There were dozens of survivors standing at the front of the room shouting together with all of the other Team in Training participants, “Cancer ends with me!”.

Those big strong walls I had built around myself at the beginning of the night started to crumble. My heart wasn’t being manipulated by sad stories. It was being invigorated with hope and beauty and empathy. I was witnessing first hand what the funds raised with Team in Training was actually doing and how it was helping people.

I have written about why I personally run and I have also written about how fundraising is manageable. But when training with Team in Training, you can’t forget the underlying drive that connects both of these things. It is why we run and why we fundraise.

As a video came on the screen, we watched how the funds raised through Team in Training aren’t just saving lives someday. Teams of doctors funded by the LLS are making major strides in cancer research, in one case actually saving the life of a sweet little girl. And as that little girl walked onto the stage healthy and goofy, I knew that my training and my slow and exhausting race the following day would be worth it. It could be my baby standing on the stage. It could be my baby in the video. It could be my baby, standing at the front with all of those survivors, or perhaps, it could be my baby who would never have the chance to stand in front of a purple room and should “Cancer ends with me!”

Today is World Cancer Day 2014 and Team in Training has encouraged me to wear my TNT gear and run, because it is a good thing to inspire the world to be better. I probably won’t get the chance to run today, but I want to make this my act of purple inspiration.

The 619 participants sitting in that Florida ballroom early last month raised a collected 2.5 million dollars and that money is saving lives TODAY. That’s something to be proud of. That’s something worthy of inspiration.