When I told people I was running the St. Jude Memphis Half
Marathon, everyone I know who’d run one of the St. Jude races in past years
told me the same thing. The best part, they asserted, was running through the
St. Jude hospital campus and seeing all the children cheering on the runners.
It made you understand why you were running, they said, and it is truly
inspiring. Funny thing is I almost missed it. We had gotten to a point where
the course narrowed and there was a row of a half dozen runners in front of me,
side by side and impassable. It drives me nuts when people do this, and when
two of them finally created a gap I could run through I was muttering pettily
to myself about people being so rassa frassin’ clueless. At that point I
happened to notice a bunch of children lining the course and cheering, so I waved
and smiled. Not until I had almost run completely by them did it hit me: these
were those children.
I don’t know what I expected to see when I ran through the
campus. I guess I had certain expectations of how they would look, but in
truth, they just looked like a bunch of kids. And that’s just it, isn’t it.
They are just a bunch of kids. They
want the same things any other kid wants, though they are going through something
nobody would want, not at any age and certainly not as a child. One of the
little girls featured prominently on the posters and brochures for the race
looked disturbingly like JonBenet Ramsey to me, but before I could go too far
down the path of questioning whether a little girl should be made up to look so
mature, I snapped out of it. Hell, she could dress up like Jason Voorhees in a
hockey mask holding a blood-drenched ax if she wanted given what she’s been through. I don’t
know what it’s like to have cancer and I hope I never find out, but it’s not
hard to empathize in this case.
It shouldn’t be hard to empathize in other cases either.
Kids with cancer are kids. Kids who are undocumented, kids whose parents are on
welfare, kids who speak a different language or practice a different religion,
kids who are starting to feel like they just aren’t the same as most other
people in some essential way—still kids. And if I can understand that for
children, why not adults? I’m not naïve; I know it’s one thing to respect
people who are different from you and another entirely to deal with huge,
complex issues like crime and poverty. I haven’t a clue how to fix those issues
in any meaningful, lasting way, but I have to believe that perceiving
commonality while respecting difference is a decent start and something I can
do in my everyday existence.
The human brain is wired to look for patterns. This isn’t a
bad thing; it’s how we learn. It is also, potentially and unfortunately, how we
end up stereotyping and scapegoating. These people are violent criminals. Those
people are hateful bigots. That other group, they’re lazy and ignorant. And
them, over there? Oh don’t get me started. But really, have you talked to them? Have you met any of “them”?
I’m not suggesting that people have to go out and start up conversations with
strangers to get to know them better, since I myself would never do that in a
billion years. You really only have to look at the people you already know.
Seriously. Among my own circle of friends there are people of different
religions or no religion, people with different political stances, people whose
first language wasn’t English and country of birth wasn’t the U.S., people who
were undocumented, people who were on welfare, people whose gender is nonbinary,
people with mental or physical handicaps—I could go on and on. We don’t always
see eye to eye, no, but we are
friends. Significantly, a lot of us met through running. You can run alongside
someone for months with no clue what they do for a living or who they voted for
or much else other than the fact that they love to do something you love too.
When you do happen to find out something in another person that might make you
go “ohhh” because it’s something you feel very deeply to be wrong, there’s that
“ohhh” moment, but it’s usually followed by an “eh.” Whatever. We can
still run together.
I don’t consider myself Christian and I know a little about
the problematic history of the upcoming holidays, but to many people this time
of year is in fact about a child. Well and good: let it be about a child, about
a bunch of children for that matter. Let it be about what we blindly assume
about certain children and about how we have the ability to question these
assumptions if we choose to, if we just stretch our brains and hearts a tiny
bit more. I took a risk writing this post; I hate sappiness and sentimentality,
and I’m not sure I managed to get past all that to say something meaningful. But as with running, it’s an easy risk to take. The downside is minimal;
the potential gain is huge.
