Ready Set Go!

Click here to listen.

I find myself on a cold and wet day, standing on the tarmac of a race track. Not behind the wheel of anything fast, just in running clothes, slightly damp already, waiting rather anxiously to start a 5k run.

It’s a new experience for me. The week before, I’d asked my son why on earth he had signed our family up. “For the vibes and the bonds” he replied, cheerfully.  Which, at that moment, didn’t feel entirely convincing.

There are hundreds of people. The starting pistol goes. The fast ones set off immediately.
By the time my little group is ready, we’re in what can only be described as the super-slow category.

About halfway round, my daughter and I find each other. From then on, we run together. Later she tells me she would probably have walked parts of it if I hadn’t been there alongside her. And I know I would have gone much slower without her. Which is surprising, really, because we weren’t competing against each other at all.

The other runners mattered to me too. Their very presence pulled me forward. Somehow, I ran a personal best.

Economists call this coopetition: the idea that we often do better when we compete alongside others rather than against them. Faith traditions noticed this long before economists did. In the Qur’an, the book Muslims turn to for guidance, God tells us: “So race with one another towards good.”

That word race can sound intimidating. If someone else is ahead, I must be behind. But I’m starting to hear it differently. A race, it turns out, doesn’t have to be hostile. Sure, There’s commitment and effort. But not supremacy. Not trying to make others fail. Someone else having a head start or doing well doesn’t take anything away from me. It made me wonder how often I’ve treated life as a race I have to win - when actually, we might just need each other to finish.

I crossed that finish line tired, yet grateful. As I queued for my first ever medal, it struck me that on a track famous for winners and losers, I’d experienced something very different.

I’d run my race, better, because I was alongside others running their race too.

‍