Submitted by Team CMMD mate, Joseph Peck
There are things in this world that we have taken for granted since the very dawn of our species. Gravity for instance. We understand that if we drop a ball, it will fall earthward. Another could be the law of supply and demand. Low supply equals high prices. Conversely, high supply equates to lower prices. We also understand that if we have an amount of something, and we give it away, we no longer have it. It’s a no- brainer. I have five apples. I give you the five apples. Now you have them, and I don’t. That’s something we understood even before the age of three.
Actually, life is generally easy to understand. We live, we flit around for seventy-five or eighty years, then we head off into the unknown. Lots of things happen in that time, most of which, if we stopped to think about them, make sense. I work hard in school, I can get a better job. I yell at my boss, I need to find another job. There is an easily understandable and readily identifiable cause and effect that governs our lives.
There are things in this universe, however, that do not follow the normal laws of physics; things that defy even our basic understanding. Love for instance. Love is something we can only understand by experiencing. Trying to explain it is like trying to explain the taste of an apple.Love defies the law of physics that we have come to rely on to make sense of the world. It is the only thing in the known universe that, the more you give away, the more you have.
There is a very old saying, dating back to Biblical times: “It is better to give than to receive.” That has never been truer than in our case. To give to this cause if far superior than needing to receive from it. We, this blessed fraternity of runners, walkers, and riders, have been moved to do what we do out of love. We have witnessed or heard stories of those in the throes of sickness, fighting a dragon whose name has come to mean “horror”. Yet, instead of ear, we have felt love. Love for the sufferer; love for those that will suffer; love for those who have suffered. That love has wrapped its tendrils of peace around our hearts, and given us not despair, but determination; not dispiritedness, but a spirit of camaraderie, and even hope.
We run, walk, and ride because love has moved us to feel something other than despondency. Out of love for others, we do not, as Don Quixote did, tilt at windmills. We fight the dragon. And we also find, that when we have given all of our love to the cause, our well is not only not empty, but filled beyond our meager ability to explain — the more we have given, the more we have. That love is one more piece of the puzzle.
Through our love, and through our efforts andthe effort of countless others, this dragon will die. It can and it must be defeated. That dragon has taken far too many lives; mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, lovers and friends have all fallen to its insatiable hunger. Yet we fight on. Our battle cry, one that needs to fly high on unfurled banners, and be shouted as our war cry, is one word: Love.
You see, that is one thing the dragon will never conquer. Once more unto the breach!
