A Different Perspective

   I may be wrong but more than any other time since I started following running bloggers religiously, it seems as though right at the moment we are all injured. I cannot remember such a litany of fractured feet, strained quads, wonky knees, bad hips, PF and burning shins.
   With all of this, we have been stopped from running. Some of us are only missing our daily runs, others have lost out on races they'd placed many of their recent hopes and dreams on.
   There have been tears, anger, depression and, if none of those, then at least a sense of wistfulness and loss.
   All of this over not being able to run.
   As difficult as it might have been for me to understand this over a year ago, now that I am a runner myself and have also been deprived of that ability for periods of time, I fully understand.
   From time to time, I have offered whatever advice, support, or encouragement I thought I could to any of my fellow bloggers who were out of commission and struggling with it. I have what I think is a fairly analytical mind and I believe I offer well thought-out opinions.
   Here is an opinion I have not offered before.

   Get over it!

   I know how that sounds. I know the harsh, dismissive ring the words seem to carry because, believe me, I apply it fully to myself as well. Hang on, though, and I shall explain.
   I know three people who are unable to walk, either as the result of an accident or due to a rare neurological affliction.
   These were people who, for most of their lives, had been as spry and able as any of us. They walked, they ran, they played sports. And, I'm certain, took all of this for granted.
   One of them, a high school compatriot, became a paraplegic as the result of a car accident which was not his fault. Another is a person the agency I work for supports. His decline has been very slow and agonizingly deliberate and is nerve-related. The other is my brother-in-law who severed his spine in a mountain biking mishap.

   We who have been briefly deprived of our ability to run are, I'm sure, still able to walk to the doctor's office, walk around the grocery store, head upstairs to put the kids to bed, take the dog out in the morning and step outside for the mail. These three people I have mentioned have not only been deprived of this briefly, they have been deprived of this forever.
   I can assure you that any of them would be happy to be able to walk gingerly down steps, worried about whether your knee might give out. There is no doubt in my mind that feeling that searing pain in a heel as you step on the floor first thing in the morning would leave them breathless and ecstatic. To be out doing their weekly long run and all of the sudden feel that all-too-familiar twinge in the hip would leave them dancing for joy, pain or not.
   Yes, these three people (and millions more in the world) would love to feel your pain because what they feel now is nothing.