Josh Cox: Carpe Diem
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #2)
Posted February 6th, 2008 at 3:15 PM by Josh Cox
Section: News & Results, Marathons, Motivation, Olympics, Elite Athlete Blogs, Josh Cox
Check back every other Wednesday for his latest entry and for more information about Cox, also please visit: www.joshcox.com
In ‘97 Cox ran and won a 50-mile ultra, in ’99 he ran his first marathon making him the youngest Trials qualifier. The following year he clocked 2:13, which opened the door for him to train with the world’s best in Kenya. Cox has tried his hand at Reality TV, been all over magazine covers and is a fixture in the sport.
CARPE DIEM
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Baptist minister and civil rights leader“It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.”
- Francis Bacon, English philosopher and statesman“Never, never, never quit.”
- Winston Churchill, Author, soldier and Prime Minister
October 1980, Paul David Hewson and his band - formally known as “Feedback” and “The Hype” - had just released their first full-length album, Boy. Their single “I Will Follow” climbed the UK charts and their star was born. Around that time, the band joined a religious group in Dublin, the Shalom Fellowship. Time passed and some of Shalom’s leaders began criticizing the bands “involvement in the world.” The leaders told the band that in order to please God they would have to give up rock ‘n’ roll.
February 1785, 25 year-old Parliament member William Wilberforce was touring Europe and had a conversion to the faith. Wilberforce struggled with a dilemma not unlike the band’s: ’serve God or pursue his political passions’. What would they do? What was their heart saying? What were their gifts and design, their passions and desires? What made them come alive?
Fortunately, Wilberforce had better council than the band. Future UK Prime Minister William Pitt encouraged his friend to stay with politics, as did infamous former slave trader and famous “Amazing Grace” songwriter, John Newton. Wilberforce went on to lead the parliamentary campaign to abolish slavery and was a celebrated British politician and philanthropist. In 1833 he was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey.
Pitt and Newton were right - the Shalom leadership could not have been more wrong. They may as well have told the eagle not to fly and Shakespeare not to rhyme. We please God and shine brightest when we use the gifts He entrusted. Should we narrow our interests? Yes, but it’s never an either/or – how we meld our talents and passions is what makes us unique. It’s how we offer something new to the world.
Hewson (aka Bono) and his band, rather than deciding between their love for song and their love for God, chose to synthesize faith and music. And nearly three decades and 15 albums later, U2 is the toughest ticket in show business.
Never bury something you love, no matter what people may say. If you have, start excavating.
My original plan for this blog entry was to talk about Africa – the runners, the people, and my time spent there but after reading the comments and questions sent in here and over at the MySpace blog I felt the Temet Nosce dialog from my first entry should continue. After all, this blog is for you, the reader, not me, the blogger.
In the comments, Tom wrote:
“I like the idea about writing goals/desires/etc down, but what worries me is that I don’t know what to write. I fear that there’s nothing that really excites me anymore, if I take out the ego.”
My brother used to love baseball, he played on area code teams - a big deal, set county records, was a talented hitter, could throw over 90 mph but a college coach, through a long series of events, turned his love and passion into monotonous work. Subsequently, he lost his love for the game.
The same can happen for runners, writers, teachers, ministers, and businessmen. When people lose touch with the thing that once made their heart come alive their life becomes humdrum, mundane, boring, and monotonous.
How many adults really love what they do?
How many people live out their passions and dreams?
In Joe Versus the Volcano, a movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, Meg’s character said:
“My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.”
“A state of constant total amazement.” It’s like what the author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman, said, “There are no ordinary moments.”
The people who love their life and love their jobs are those who followed their hearts. Those people, whether they know it or not, ‘examined, knew, cultivated, and immersed’. They did what they loved and consequently they love what they do.
I think one of the reasons I love being around other full time athletes is that they follow their hearts; they are alive. No one has turned; no one has wavered. If your heart isn’t in it you won’t make it through the 140-mile weeks.
Like Tom said, we have to dump the ego – which can be tough, particularly for me – and really examine our heart. You said, “I don’t know what to write.”
There is something that you love. We all have something that still moves us, something that makes us feel alive.
Today I was running along the coast; at one point the road has a gradual drop, a grade so slight you hardly notice but just enough to shift gears. I was flying. The iPod was doing it’s thing, I was doing mine, and it was one of those “motion without effort” moments - the runners know what I’m talking about - and I was thinking: I really, really, love this. I feel alive out here.
It’s easy to get caught up in what the world offers but you have to strip it away. The paychecks, accolades, magazine covers, awards, and validation from people and peers. Those things fuel the ego. Strip them away and get back to what you love – and Tom, it’s never too late to follow your heart. Ronald Reagan, after an acting career, didn’t throw his hat into the political arena until age 55.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying a paycheck doesn’t matter, it does. I’m not saying quit your job tomorrow, go buy some paints, canvas, brushes, and have at it; that would be foolish. I am saying that if you do what you love then you never go to work. Too often the paycheck is the driving and determining factor in our vocational choices.
It’s never too late to follow your heart and chase down a dream or two.
Back in ’98 I had a choice, get a real job, continue my education, or run. My heart told me to run but since living in Southern California isn’t free, running would also entail working. So I prayed, knew running was the path to pursue and off I went. Run in the morning, bike to and from work, and run in the evening. Second verse, same as the first. Day in and day out the candle burned.
I ran, acquired a few sponsors but the running biz is just like any other business, starting out they’re going to pay you as little as possible. So I had plenty of gear and food but not a lot of money. All that to say this - My fellow college grads were making good money but I followed my heart, chose to run and was broke as a joke. Not ‘poor’ - I better budget my money, but ‘Poor’ - I didn’t have any money to budget. I lived on Smart Start cereal, PowerBars and Bisquik (for real!).
The other day I found a picture, circa ’99, that my brother took of me holding my beloved Smart Start box, I was grinning and had my thumb hoisted high in the air. My wife, Carrie, saw the picture and gave me the, ‘why are you posing with a cereal box’ look. She has come to expect stupid, idiotic things like this from me so it really wasn’t a big shock.
I explained to her that my brother DC made me pose for the picture because he swore that’s all I ever ate. I like that picture, it represents a great deal. I should frame it and put it on the wall … No, no … I shouldn’t. Carrie would just make me take it down.
Anyway … The Time of Testing. We all have it, where the rubber meets the road, where our life has to back up our rhetoric.
Going to dinner after Tuesday night workouts and being so poor you order a biscuit, water and some Sweet’N Low because it kind of makes the water taste like tea doesn’t impress the ‘hoity-toity’ here in San Diego but it was part of the deal. Sacrifice. If this running thing were easy everyone would do it.
Acclaimed Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling, was unemployed and living on state benefits when she completed her manuscript for the first book in the series - only to have it rejected by the first 12 publishers.
When J.R.R. Tolkien let his friend Rayner Unwin read book one of The Lord of the Rings Rayner went back to his friend and responded, “Quite honestly, I don’t know who is expected to read it.”
A steady dose of shut doors marked Abe Lincoln’s early political pursuits.
When I was on The Bachelorette one of the guys said, “Man, you’re real lucky. You get to do what you love.” I nodded, offered a half grin, and told him, “thanks,” but it wasn’t luck, it was a choice.
Fortunately, I qualified for the Trials in ‘99; and in 2000 I underwent physiological testing and was invited to a training camp. I no longer had to burn the candle at both ends; I could train.
Thankfully, J.K. Rowling wasn’t deterred from following her dream and a year later she found a suitor for her first book.
Fortunately for Tolkien, after 14 years of writing, a critic’s comment wouldn’t sway, a single pundit’s voice wouldn’t deter.
The country, and the five-dollar bill, will be forever grateful to our 16th President, Honest Abe, for being the poster child for “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
Let me close by composing the crux of my first two entries. This is what I’ve been getting at. This is what I’ve been trying to pull from the mire. This is what I’ve been trying to say through sentences, stories, and songs. I pray it doesn’t fall on deaf ears:
Can a blog by a runner on a running site change things? I think so. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have signed on.
I want to wake people up. When you watch cancer make your dad fade away, when you listen to a successful businessman, a man who was president and CEO of companies, a man who made millions and had everything the world could offer, tell you, days from death, that from where he laid on that hospice bed only two things mattered: His relationship with God and his relationships with man, it changes you.
He told me to be faithful with the gifts, relationships, time, and talents entrusted. I hung on his every word. I think, for the first time, I wasn’t just waiting for my turn to speak. There in that hospice room, I really, really learned how to listen.
A few days later I was holding his hand and he took his last breath. I can’t tell you what that was like; I reevaluated everything: Running, goals, dreams, pursuits, relationships … Everything.
My dad had some dreams he never acted on. He thought he had tomorrow, but tomorrow was a lie. His words held me captive; then those words set me free.
What I’m saying to you is this: YOU ARE GREAT! Somewhere inside, rests the ability to be absolutely marvelous, splendid, magnificent, and spectacular. Not some of us, but ALL of us … every last one.
Some us find it, some of us don’t. It’s our job to find it and dedicate our lives to achieving that greatness. Not so we can become famous, not so we can become rich, not so we can gain and take and be on TV and drive fast cars – but rather so we can offer that greatness to the world and make this planet a better place.
So go. Quit reading already. Find your something. Believe in your dreams.
Claw, scrape, sweat, and bleed to make it happen. Find the door to your dreams and knock, knock, and knock until your knuckles bleed and your bones hurt. Knock until you wake everyone in the house. When they tell you to leave, keep knocking. If you knock long enough and hard enough, eventually someone will open the door just to shut you up.
Never give up and never give in. When you find something worth dying for then you have found something worth living for … You can do it. Believe. Temet Nosce. Carpe Diem.
“I’m wide awake, I’m wide awake, wide awake, I’m not sleeping.” - “Bad” by U2
Written while listening to: U2’s Boy, Unforgettable Fire, and Joshua Tree, Radiohead’s In Rainbows, Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, and Johnny Cash’s final testament: American V: A Hundred Highways.
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The Final Sprint