Shakespeare has been much on my mind today after yesterday's very respectable performance of Macbeth, which is not an easy play for amateur players to pull off. Although it was advertised as taking place in "post-apocalyptic Scotland," it was true to the original and included all my favorite parts. Surely the Bard was at the height of his powers when he wrote this play.
I thought of that quote from Julius Caesar which is a favorite of mine, and which I tried without success to post to my friend Christine's blog (I encountered an error about a gateway or something):
“Bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible.”
She had been talking about her family and how it was divided in different ways, and how she and Emily and Philip had run a race this past weekend. As readers of this blog know, Martha has beaten me twice in half-marathons in the past two years at the Outer Banks before I was injured. It keeps us runners on our toes when we test ourselves, in training runs or as anonymous participants in races. But it takes us into a different dimension when we compete in a personal way against friends and family members. (It teaches us humility for one thing!)
The word
“competition” comes from the Latin “com-petere,” which means “to strive
together.” That’s a different light on
competition. We strive with things impossible, we test our limits, when we compete.
That's why I'm not just a runner, I'm a competitor. And I'm eyeing that next race six days from now.
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
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