Growing up in West Phoenix back in the 80’s and early 90's, there
were a few things I knew how to do fairly well: run, pretend I was awake in
Sunday School, and write. The first was not discovered until I was 9 and in the
4th grade. In our group of friends, we only wore skirts and dresses,
so many of my classmates found it funny that I could run as well as I did, especially
during P.E. and at track meets. The second was a skill I developed, because
Miss Michelle (who I love and still see every Sunday) had a particular method
of teaching that I pretty much had down. So, if called on, I somehow could
figure out the answer to her question, even if straight out of a doze fest. The
last wasn’t something I realized until I was 11 and in Ms. Kordelski’s 6th
grade class. I still remember my very first haiku:
Where
can I find peace?
Peace
is nowhere to be found.
Where
can I find peace?
It’s then that I fell in love with writing and
putting words on a page, like my mom, who loves the English language. I was
never any good as an orator though, which is pretty much still the case, but
that’s beside the point.
The funny thing is that by the time I was about to
start 7th grade, during junior high orientation, my mom ran into a
colleague from her broadcasting days in Nigeria. Soon enough, her friend’s
daughter and I became fast friends, and we were pretty much the Nigerian
Nightmares of track at our middle school. Our goal during track season was to
beat one another’s times. We had different periods for P.E., but when the
annual mile day in P.E. came around, we took mental notes of our stated times
and compared them either during lunch or after school. Our goal was always to
better one another, and excuses were not allowed. If my time sucked, she’d tell
me so and vice versa. Our mindset was that there was always room for
improvement, so whichever one of us made the better time would always say, in
her own way, “You can do better.”
In time, we found that cross country was our thing; neither
of us excelled in sprinting. Every time our coach, Señor Calderon, gave us tips,
we took mental notes. Both of our dads loved that we enjoyed running, and they
attended every Saturday meet we had, especially if they were unable to make our
after school meets. My friend, Ekwui, and I learned to lean on each other. We were
a team; it was us against them.
I recall several meets where I started slow, as I
always did. I’d catch up to her and she’d say, “Go”. That was our way of
signaling to whichever of us had the strength to continue to go ahead, no
regrets. If after her rest, she caught up, I’d say, “Go”. However, at home
stretch, we’d hold out for one other and make sure that we were back-to-back,
if not shoulder-to-shoulder, to make it as 1 and 2, 2 and 3, or 3 and 4. Our
goal was to always be in the top 3, if possible, but we each got 4th
place at least once. We were always proud of each other’s accomplishments and
dreamed of training and making it to the Olympics someday as well as becoming
doctors.
Today, we still cheer each other on, even though she
went the path of the M.D. and I followed my passion for writing. There’s
nothing like having someone who shares your dreams, or at least knows from
where you came. We laugh now, as we get older, about how we could run without
too much thought back then. These days, however, we have longer stretching
routines and our bones tend to ache more and our bodies don’t always cooperate
with us.
Sitting back now, I realize that I may not have
challenged myself as much as I did in my youth if I didn’t have so many
cheerleaders in the form of teachers, friends, siblings, and parents. The thing
is, no matter how young, old, talented, educated, experienced, or smart we are,
having individuals in our corners who believe in us is important. We achieve
more and seem to be better with those
sometimes annoying voices in our ears saying, “That’s not going to cut it; I
know you can do better.”
So, today, I implore you…if you have a dream or
goal, anything your heart desires to do, find a friend or loved one you trust.
Tell your vision or goal to that individual and ask him or her to keep you
accountable. Heck, keep one another accountable. You don’t quite appreciate the
power of a sometimes not-so-gentle nudge until you reach the finish line and
look around for that one cheerleader who’s carrying your duffel bag, towel, and
all the weight you had to shed along the way to successfully get where you’re
going. It’s then you realize that all he or she wanted all along was for you to
reach your full potential. So today, I challenge you all: Go, you’ve got this
(whatever your ‘this’ is). You’re not alone.
