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TO
MY GRANDSON NICHOLAS: YOU ARE A TRUE CHAMPION
Dear Nicholas:
You gave your grandfather one of his proudest moments last
week. Watching you run your last high school cross-country race in the
state championships at Carrollton was special. You didn’t win the race
and you didn’t finish in the top ten. You did something better. You gave
it everything you had.
You told me last summer that you were going to dedicate
yourself to making your last year of cross-country a good one. You were
the first to say that prior to this year, you had not done as well as
you could have. Frankly, I wasn’t sure that your heart was in the sport.
I was wrong.
Cross-country, as you well know, is a tough, grueling sport.
It is about more than just physical ability. It is about self-discipline
and mental toughness. There are no huddles that allow you to catch your
breath. There is no teammate to cover for you if you want to dog it for
a couple of minutes. There is no one else you can point to for a poor
performance but yourself. You are all alone. You succeed or you don’t,
based on the effort you make. Cross-country is that simple. It is that
difficult.
While you can be very proud that you ran your fastest times
ever this season and that your Chapel Hill High School team finished
third in the state, the most important thing to take away from this year
is that you now understand the value of hard work. That is a lesson that
will serve you well for the rest of your life. Sadly, it is a lesson
that too many of us seem to have forgotten.
We have become a nation that believes strongly in
entitlement. We want something for nothing. We think society should
remove all the discomfort from our lives and that we should not be held
accountable for any bad decisions we have made along the way. To put it
in cross-country terms, we don’t want to train and we don’t want to run.
We want somebody to tote us around the course and across the finish
line. We want all the rewards, but none of the risks.
As you get older, you will see that life is very much like
cross-country, only we never know where the finish line will be. As in
all sports, you will see a lot of people on the sidelines. Some will
cheer you on. Some will criticize you, but the majority aren’t willing
to get into the game and risk failure. Life can be very hard, tedious
and frustrating, and there are no guarantees that you will always be
successful. Like cross-country, much depends on how hard you work. What
is most important is that you be able to look yourself in the eye at the
end of the day, knowing that you did your best. That will be your
greatest reward. It is called self-respect.
Your high school cross-country career may be over, but the
lessons that came from it are just beginning. They will serve you well
in the years to come. When the going gets tough — and it will — never
forget about running those long, hard miles last summer on the back
roads of South Fulton County in the sweltering heat, pushing yourself to
get better. That experience has given you the confidence and the
tenacity to handle anything life throws at you.
Soon you will be off to college and a whole new set of
challenges, but I hope you will always remember what a special year this
has been. You have competed with runners that had more natural ability,
but none of them had more heart. You gave it everything you had. In this
old man’s biased eyes, you are a true champion.
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