To the Class of 2021

Not one run on my challenge was done alone. On seperate legs I was joined by my father, my sister, a male Irish Ultramarathoner with a fantastic sense of humor, a female winner of the Footlocker Cross Country championships and doting mom, my coach and mentor, a friend since elementary school, and a school counselor of which I have never heard utter a pessimistic thought. The thing that brought all of them together was that they were willing to suffer with me. To endure some level of pain so that I may not walk the road I had chosen alone.

Lesson 2: Make friendships with people who are willing to run with you in the dark.

Much had led me to that challenge I completed 2 months ago. A breakup in sophomore year, a book which changed my life, and a decision to join the cross country team. In high school I experienced my highest highs, and my lowest lows. My best answer to the question of how to live well, is to live with purpose, and be willing to put in the work.

Lesson 3: Be willing to put in the work.

There are many by-products of living with purpose. One of them is something I call "earned happy". It's the smell of the air after it rains, or the sunshine on your skin after a long winter. "Earned happy" is the soreness in your legs that you feel after a workout the day before. It's ending a relationship you know you should've ended a long time ago, or fighting to keep one going that you know is worth it, even if it's hard. It's settling into bed after a long day's work, especially if it's next to someone you love. Happiness is being kind to someone, or falling really hard for the right somebody, or taking a run when you know everyone else is asleep. It's being the person you've always wanted to be, and putting the work in to make that possible. True happiness is not the un-earned happy, the fleeting feeling that is simply borrowed and paid back with damage to your body or relationships. Earned happy is created by putting in the requisite work, and by the investment in yourself and the things you care about.

Living with purpose will not mean you are happy all the time. That, in and of itself, would render happiness meaningless. But it is a matter of making decisions which will pay dividends and give you purpose. It is only then, when the work is done, the sweat spent, and the hands calloused, that the happy comes with no strings attached, and you know you are living well.

Because living well is perhaps all we can really hope to do. Right now, we are at some point in the journey which is the dash on our headstone- the dash between the date we were born and the date we will inevitably die. The inevitably of an end, the finality of life, gives it its meaning; the same way the pain of life, whether the breakups and lost loved ones, or the long workouts and runs where it feels like your feet are full of cement gives you meaning. This dash is where every promise is made and kept, every heart broken and pieced back together, and every hope and dream is either realized or forgotten. Perhaps no poet has put our journey in this dash better than Ursula K. Le Guin, who herself died in 2018. "When I take you to the Valley, you'll see the blue hills on the left and the blue hills on the right, the rainbow and the vineyards under the rainbow late in the rainy season, and maybe you'll say, 'There it is, that's it!' But I'll say, 'A little farther.' We'll go on, I hope, and you'll see the roofs of the little towns and the hillsides yellow with wild oats, a buzzard soaring and a woman singing by the shadows of a creek in the dry season, and maybe you'll say, 'Let's stop here, this is it!' But I'll say, 'A little farther yet.' We'll go on, and you'll hear the quail calling on the mountain by the springs of the river, and looking back you'll see the river running downward through the wild hills behind, below, and you'll say, 'Isn't that the Valley?' And all I will be able to say is 'Drink this water of the spring, rest here awhile, we have a long way yet to go and I can't go without you.'"