A very good friend of mine, Jimmy, was diagnosed a year ago with bone cancer in his ankle shortly after attending my wedding and after a year of cemo, amputation and the toughest year of his life he will be taking part in a world record breaking attempt to run the fastest marathon.
I met Jimmy when I joined my first fulltime job and worked under his tutelage for a number of years before leaving and setting up my own business. When I worked with Jimmy one of his key mantras that I remember him talking about regularly was that people aren’t lucky in life – they make their own luck. At the time I didn’t really get what he was on about, surely some people win the lottery, ie lucky, and many others don’t – not lucky. But as time has gone on I have slowly adopted it as my own saying as I realised how right he was.
It is easy to let life pass you by, but those who grab opportunities, take risks and push boundaries usually it pays off in the form of progress and change. Now to the outside world looking in, it might be that the individual was ‘lucky’ to get that job offer, meet their partner or live in that great house. However I am sure behind any lucky person is persistence and huge amount of effort.
When I spend time with students or new employees usually they say I am lucky to be where I am or do what I do. What they fail to see is the ten years of graft and sacrifices that got me to that point. At the time I didn’t really see it as sacrifices and graft but looking back it certainly was a tough time. The same goes with Jimmy, with his endless positive attitude and energy, I am sure some people looked at Jimmy and thought how lucky he must be. Super successful in his career, great wife, kids and home.
But then he had one of the worst pieces of news anyone can have, but being the guy he is, and the amazing family he has around him, he managed over the last year to overcome cancer and now finds himself starting to turn his experience from such a huge negative into a positive. He has a blog which detailed his feelings over the last year, and while he did it really for friends and family, it has been picked up and followed by many people all over the world.
This lead to the introduction to the Sprintathon and his invitation to run the last 100 meters in this world breaking attempt to run the fastest marathon. They have a very good video which is worth watching and they are raising money for Stand up to Cancer which goes towards the amazing work that helped make Jimmy better. Maybe he was lucky or maybe many thousands of people have worked tirelessly over many years to improve the chances of surviving cancer which along with Jimmy’s determination has meant that he gets to take centre stage and take a bow. Bravo.
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