Runner's Heights: Trade a TV Spot, Senator?

Running is one of the finest metaphors for the unfolding of life itself. Every time that you have conquered one difficulty, surmounted another obstacle, running hits you with challenge after challenge in the form of injury and pain. And if you can't find intelligent and judicious ways to transcend these hurdles, then you are thrust backwards and become an impediment to your own progress. The urge and the desire is to push your body further and more towards the brink of its physical limits while being able to repeat this game over and over until you have pushed the limits in the process. But somewhere in this process, your mind loses touch of what your body can really do and that's perhaps because the human spirit is timeless whereas the body is fettered by the shackles of age and time. So, I am experience this dichotomy first-hand, having naively willed myself to run the same distance and duration every day this week. So here is the body's answer to that: soreness, lethargy, and shin splints that are back with a vengeance of rabid dogs.

As we run in circles around issues and matters that concern the future of the world, it was refreshing to discuss Steven Covey's Circle of Concern vs. Circle of Influence. And we were thinking of how most of us have greater circles of concern than circles of influence. But there are those whose circles of influence are much greater than the circles of concern and they are probably classified by Mr. Covey as "selfish" people who could do more. Who does it remind of you more than the majority of the Senators today? Powerful, yet parochial, they wallow in the mire of their own lobbies belying the hopes and aspirations of the people that look upto them as leaders and guides. Would it be any different if Senators were asked to have their first-borns serve in war by a government fiat? Perhaps, then they would move to line the Humvees in Iraq and Afghanistan with better armour guards and worry less about which interest group that they could gyp for their fatuous re-election campaigns. Their deceiving 15-second TV spots could stock a homeless-shelter kitchen for a month. Easily.

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