A Milestone of Determination

“I  am a new day rising

I'm a brand new sky
To hang the stars upon tonight
I am a little divided
Do I stay or run away
And leave it all behind?

It's times like these you learn to live again
It's times like these you give and give again”

-Its times like these, Foo Fighters

I have always considered Canada to be like a second home having lived in Vancouver for a good part of my early childhood. I was thoroughly enamored by how beautiful it was, how responsible its citizens were, and how the only criticisms I heard were mostly backhanded compliments such as, “Canada is not interesting because it hasn’t messed up enough like the rest of us.” However, I did find one of its traditions quite irksome.

Every year on September 19^th school kids across Canada would be made to run a couple of kilometers rain or shine. Being a young boy of twelve at the time and basking in total ignorance and laziness I found this tradition to be quite bothersome. The teachers tried consoling me by telling me it was for a good cause.

“What is this good cause?” I immediately shot back with the arrogance of a boy entering adolescence. The cause was the commemoration of Terry Fox’s ‘marathon of hope’. A marathon that Terry Fox had undertaken at the age of 21 to raise money and awareness across the country for cancer research after losing his own right leg to the malady. Still unconvinced I protested exclaiming, “That’s unfair!! Why should I be forced into this just because some hotshot half a century ago decided to run?”  I can see how Ayn Rand got most of her ideas.

It wasn’t until just a few years ago after returning to India and seeing the occurrence of this cruel disease in my own family that I decided to revisit the life and times of Terry Fox.

So what had this man actually accomplished? Why does he stand out?

Well it turns out that Terry, at the age of nineteen had his right leg amputated because of osteosarcoma, a cancer whose genesis is near the knees. A profound shock indeed, but nothing compared to the pain he said he felt watching kids in chemotherapy wards with him. This imprint inspired him to run 8500 kilometers across Canada east to west, in the hope that he would be able to raise one million dollars for cancer research. Regardless of all the obvious cynicism he faced he began his journey that he called ‘marathon of hope’ on the eastern tip of Canada. He would run a marathon of 41 kilometers….every single day ….for 143 days… on one real leg. The more he ran the more a nation watched in captive awe. Support grew by the thousands and so did Terry’s inspiration and ambition. He challenged every Canadian to donate one dollar, twenty-four million in total.

Unfortunately fairy tales don’t always have happy endings. After running 5400 kilometers, a distance that almost covers length and breadth of India to put it into context, he realized that the cancer had spread to both his lungs. Tumors the size of golf balls had been present throughout his endeavor. Heartbroken he vowed from his stretcher that if anyway he could get back and finish the job he would but more importantly others need to keep running and fighting regardless.

And that is exactly how Canada responded. Donations flooded in from everywhere and apart from the two million dollars that Terry himself had raised another 20 million was raised in total. From that year on the annual Terry Fox run was organized in Canada and adopted by thirty other countries. In the three decades that the run has taken place it has raised over 500 million dollars. To think, that all he wanted was to raise a million and spread awareness in Canada.

In one of the greatest tragic ironies Terry turns to his mother one day and tells her he only had a single regret. He succeeded in raising millions of dollars but did not have enough money to buy his mother a Christmas present. He died the following year at the age of twenty-two. He had recoursed an entire society in a span of three years.

What is my reaction to him now?

That’s unfair. Through sheer conviction and determination he has made everyone around him look small. He has trivialized most issues I face every day. He has taken away most of my rights to even complain. His accomplishment is just unfair to the rest of us. What an incredible milestone he has set.

But I have realized that it is times like these that we learn to live again. It really concentrates your mind on what is important. I hope one day the ‘marathon of hope’ becomes a regular practice in India and inspires millions like it has inspired me.  I guess this fairy tale did have a happy ending. Or maybe it is just the beginning?