I’m dazed lying on my back. I push with my hands to sit up but roll over to my right and there’s pain. A lot of pain. It turns out that in falling off my bike I’ve broken both bones in my arm. Radius and ulna severed and will have to be pinned. I’m not going to be driving for the rest of summer 2007.
So, I start walking to work and mention to my friend, Jonathan Keyne, that it’s a bit boring and mostly slow. “Then you should run.” he suggests and continues enthusiastically, “And you could join me and together we can run the London Marathon this year”.
“I can’t run a marathon" I reply my tone both sarcastic and condescending. I think he’s a dimwit.
He relies with three letters that change my life forever.
“Yet”.
I stare blankly.
“You can’t run a marathon yet.”
1. Why this, why now?
Can you guess the most common question I’m asked after ‘grownup’ conversations on how the power balance of our world is shifting from you and I as autonomous beings with hopes dreams and loves, to a feudal global structure with our next generation being merely potential and pawns for the whims of the rulers?
“What can I do? I can’t do anything”
The engineer in me kicks in with a list of pragmatic options; “Be like Ghandi - Don’t comply”, “Talk to strangers…”
I get it so wrong.
2. What is this Insight?
Yet.
Of course they feel powerless, maybe frightened and guilty at their inability to make a difference.
Yet.
I trained for three months and ran the London marathon not as me, Eddie but as ‘Steady-Eddie’.
Steady-Eddie could do stuff Eddie couldn’t.
No problem for Steady-Eddie to wake up before the birds and run 15 miles. Stand the taste of those horrible energy gels? Sure. Not scream during a sports massage? Easy.
Steady-Eddie was the opposite of Dr Evil’s ‘Mini-Me’. Instead he was a better twin. A bolder, more capable and happier version of Eddie. Definitely a better twin
From the start, Steady-Eddie was trying to do everything that I couldn’t do, yet
3. Who says What?
What would you have to change about yourself to become the person who helps to lead us away from tyranny and who thrives on the joy of the #GoldenAge they create?
Imagine if you will, your better twin, your ‘Maxi Me’,
Listen. What do hear them saying to you?
You can’t stop the madness, yet.
But your Maxi-Me can start to stop it now.
Post Script
I had Steady-Eddie printed on my marathon t-shirt. Spectators would shout “Steady-Eddie” and I would reply, ‘Ready’ or ‘Steady’. Kept me amused through the pain.
