Dreams

It got real cold over the weekend in New York and I decided that it was a great opportunity to stay inside, be lazy and get organized. For example, I had a pile of unopened mail on my desk. Nothing important - no, I don't leave mail from medical schools unopened for example :). So I started to go through every envelope. There were a couple of pleasant surprises: I got a nice certificate from New York Road Runners to commemorate my marathon finish. It has my name, my time, my place in the whole field, among women and my age group and it's signed by NYRR CEO and marathon queen Mary Wittenberg as well as the mayor. It's a nice touch - well, for nearly $200 it costs to register for the NYC marathon, it's not that nice. I was a little surprised that out of the 47,000+ finishers, there were only about 17,000 women (for some reason I thought it was closer to 50/50). Looking at this piece of paper, I thought, wow, just a year ago, a sub 4 hour marathon seemed like a superhuman feat to me. I had a goal, I trained, I got faster, I got more confident, I ran as best as I could, and there it was. Who says anything is impossible?

The next larger envelope contained something I had ordered for myself before Christmas as a present. It worked out nicely since I totally forgot about it and it was quite a surprise when I opened it yesterday. It's a print from this amazing NYT cartoonist, Christoph Niemann, who ran the NYC marathon last year with a notepad and live-drew the entire course. There were several drawings among these I loved but this one I felt special about. To me it symbolizes the spirit of the marathon. And more. It symbolizes that point where the race almost completely crumples the spirit. It's that point where you are ready to surrender to it, to just give up and stop running. But you don't. And somehow this picture reminds me not only of that moment - several moments, in fact, seemingly endless moments - on 5th Ave where I felt exactly like the guy does on the notepad, but also reminds me that I made it past that and didn't give up. Here it is - now on my wall in a nice frame:



I also finally got around to getting a nice frame for my diploma. It had been sitting between two oversized books in its protective envelope since the summer. It was time to get it out. It's also a symbol of not giving up more than anything else. I started a new folder for my medical school applications too: the acceptance folder. It now has 4 letters in it. As a reminder, I am tempted to start a rejection folder alongside, to never forget to stay humble and aim higher. But in any case, a lot of dreams I had considered unattainable are now hanging on my wall or lying nicely in a tucked away folder on my bookshelf. It's a pretty good feeling. And proof that impossible is absolutely nothing.