Romans saw Venus and Mars (painting) as the source of energy. I look to God, whose wisdom tells us, "Where attention goes, energy flows." Everybody likes that rhyming line. Nobody, including me, absorbs it until they consult certain life experiences.
I sure didn't get it at seven when my dad, watching me act like a jumping bean, said, "I hope you never lose that enthusiasm, Chip." My teachers, however, frequently expelled me from the classroom.
Across high school I was a "three-sport" jock because Maumee Valley was small. Football and basketball were fun. Track was not. But, "Chapman's don't quit!"
Why no fun? My body type doomed me to an agonizing event: the mile.
To ease my suffering I adopted a three-part strategy: first lap fast, middle laps slow, final lap run like crazy. My coach hated it. "Chapman! Where was your energy in the middle laps!" he always complained, even though I won come-from-behind-to races so often that I set the school record.
Where was my energy? My attention on pre-race fears of pain kidnapped it. It also stole appreciation of many spring days.
Today, people still ask "Where do you get such unusual energy." adding a shadowed qualifier, "at your age?"
Part of the answer? This is the final lap or final hundred yards of my life's mile run. No one would say I loafed through the middle laps. But I'm running like crazy now.
Ringing in my head is another life-changing line: Viktor Frankl's reminder, "He/she who has a why can bear almost any how."*
Mine is the caregiver's "why." To serve. Even though I have often over-served myself, so long as health remains I will use my luck to help those who have lost it. Sometimes I even overwhelm others.
The hundred yard dash is not a run. It is a sprint.
-Erie Chapman
*quoting: Friedrich Nietzsche
Venus and Mars, Metropolitan Museum, Paolo Veronese, 1570s
