I was crying because of the pain. The “Indian Run” I was doing… was breaking me. My heart thumped like crazy; my legs wanted to give out; my breathing was shallow. The cold air made my breaths short and like daggers in my throat. My vision was foggy. I’m surprised that I even manage to make my surroundings out. I was so disconnected from the outside world; I was having an internal battle with myself. I heard nothing else but a few words here and there from my teammates. The rest…was just white noise behind the shriek of words in my head telling me to stop. At that moment I had a side of me saying that it was okay to stop, and the other side told me to keep going. The voice of comfort was much louder. But for some reason I kept trucking along, working through it, even if it felt like I was running with cement tied to the bottom of my shoes. I looked in front of me, praying for some sort of sign that it was going to stop. The ball I had in my hand was so…heavy and I desperately wanted to drop it. At that point, we had been running for miles. Nothing in my life was ever this extreme, I knew that giving up was not an option, not when it meant letting the teammates around me down. When we finally stopped. I collapsed and fell to the ground. I was gasping so hard that could only hear my breathing and the thumping of my heart. After that, a cloud of shame started hovering and eating away at me. How could I let myself go like this? In my mind I felt like everyone was staring at me with disgust; I felt weak. I felt like a failure. When I gather the courage to finally stand up. I looked at my instructor with sadness in my eyes. A long silence had passed before my instructor asked me why I was crying. I told him how I felt. He told me something that would change me, he told me that he had gained respect for me. But how? how could anyone, that saw a man at a time of weakness, think that man is someone worth respecting. He told me he has seen many people who are grown men, that quit when they pushed themselves. He said, “Crying does not make you weak. The fact that you pushed yourself that far and still went on showed me everything.” I was speechless. In my head, I had this image of a man being someone who never feared or never broke down. However, here he was telling me it was the complete opposite. That which what makes a strong person is when one goes farther than anyone who would dare push himself. Later, I found a quote that hit the strings in my heart and what this man said: “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it” – Thomas Jefferson. This is a sense might seem like a trivial quote, but to me, it told me everything that I needed to know. That those who accomplish and do many great things in their lives are the ones that sacrifice the most to get what they want. They are the ones willing to go the farthest when no one else will. These types of people are what I strive to be no matter how far the road is.

I was crying because of the pain. The “Indian Run” I was doing was breaking me. My heart thumped like crazy; my legs wanted to give out; my breathing was shallow. The cold air made my breaths short and like daggers in my throat. My vision was foggy. I’m surprised that I even manage to make my surroundings out. I was so disconnected from the outside world; I was having an internal battle with myself. I heard nothing else but a few words here and there from my teammates. The rest was just white noise behind the shriek of words in my head telling me to stop. At that moment I had a side of me saying that it was okay to stop, and the other side told me to keep going. The voice of comfort was much louder. But for some reason I kept trucking along, working through it, even if it felt like I was running with cement tied to the bottom of my shoes. I looked in front of me, praying for some sort of sign that it was going to stop. The ball I had in my hand was so…heavy and I desperately wanted to drop it. At that point, we had been running for miles. Nothing in my life was ever this extreme, I knew that giving up was not an option, not when it meant letting the teammates around me down. When we finally stopped. I collapsed and fell to the ground. I was gasping so hard that could only hear my breathing and the thumping of my heart. After that, a cloud of shame started hovering and eating away at me. How could I let myself go like this? In my mind I felt like everyone was staring at me with disgust; I felt weak. I felt like a failure. When I gather the courage to finally stand up. I looked at my instructor with sadness in my eyes. A long silence had passed before my instructor asked me why I was crying. I told him how I felt. He told me something that would change me, he told me that he had gained respect for me. But how? how could anyone, that saw a man at a time of weakness, think that man is someone worth respecting. He told me he has seen many people who are grown men, that quit when they pushed themselves. He said, “Crying does not make you weak. The fact that you pushed yourself that far and still went on showed me everything.” I was speechless. In my head, I had this image of a man being someone who never feared or never broke down. However, here he was telling me it was the complete opposite. That which what makes a strong person is when one goes farther than anyone who would dare push himself. Later, I found a quote that hit the strings in my heart and what this man said: “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it” – Thomas Jefferson. This is a sense might seem like a trivial quote, but to me, it told me everything that I needed to know. That those who accomplish and do many great things in their lives are the ones that sacrifice the most to get what they want. They are the ones willing to go the farthest when no one else will. These types of people are what I strive to be no matter how far the road is.