Let’s see. You just spent 69 days buried under a collapsed mine, so, to unwind, what do you do?
Well, if you’re Edison Pena, you run the 42-kilometre New York City Marathon.
Or in Edison’s case, you hobble along on knees swollen with tendonitis, crossing the finish line in five hours and 40 minutes, waving the Chilean flag and limping to one of your favourite Elvis tunes, Wonder Of You.
But I guess if you’ve spent 69 days buried alive, five hours and 40 minutes in hell doesn’t seem so bad. At least they have snacks along the way.
You would think Edison would have enough of running — during the Chilean mining ordeal, he ran approximately 10 kilometres per day, dragging a wooden sled behind him.
But, no. Edison was invited to join the VIPs for Sunday’s race, the biggest in the U.S., and like any runner, he couldn’t resist the urge to go the distance.
But why, Edison, why? Why not just drink in the cheers from the 40,000 plus at the start line, watch the race, then retire to your VIP suite with a brew?
“I wanted to motivate other people to transcend their own pain,” he said after the race.
There you go. Whenever you feel al-Qaida has just shot off your kneecaps and left you to wander in the desert, what do you do? You transcend the pain, sport. Doesn’t everyone?
In fact, this manic endurance, this indomitable will, could be what separates us from the other animals in the zoo. We think it’s our brain or our capacity for language, yet dolphins, chimpanzees and pigs all seem to share our most human traits.
Except I can’t think of a chimpanzee who would run 42 kilometres because he feels like it. Or even if he doesn’t, because he wants to “transcend his own pain.” Screw the pain, says Bonzo, and pass me a banana.
Fresh out of bananas, Edison Pena refuses to give in. As he wobbles across the finish line, we can’t help it: we’re inspired to overcome our own pain wherever it resides – in our knees or in our hearts – and live another day.
This makes us better than human. It gives us the strength to be good people: to understand, to forgive, to care about others. It’s worth a couple of sore knees.
As for Edison, he’s not satisfied running 42 kilometres on swollen knees. Next up, Graceland, and then Viva Elvis, the Cirque de Soliel show in Las Vegas.
Talk about pain.
Paul Sullivan is a Vancouver-based journalist and owner of Sullivan Media Consulting; vancouverletters@metronews.ca.
