On the weekend, my daughter Holly crushed her first ever 10km run at Race Weekend in Ottawa. Forty thousand runners ran over two days. Thousands more cheered the runners on from the sidelines along the Rideau Canal and beyond. Including Holly’s mom, of course.
As I cut up a pizza box and little photocopied Holly faces to tape on a sign to wave and cheer with (a sign that didn’t turn out quite how I imagined, but what craft does?), I wondered if I might be a tiny bit bored waiting to spot my girl among thousands of strangers running by. Should I bring a book? I knew it would take her a while (but not that long of a while as it turned out!) to reach the spot where I would wait to jump up and down, near the finish line.
I didn’t know yet the energy, good will, excitement, and the sheer pleasure of cheering everyone on, and not just the people you love. Cheering the least runny-runners out there was especially lovely: 100-year old Roy, a guy dressed like a banana, couples holding hands as they ran-ished to the finish line together, and a woman in a taco costume.
Before Holly raced, we watched the 5k wrap up together. We share a kind of soppiness that can actually lead to face-in-hands-level weepiness at things like the bravery, gumption, stick-to-it-iveness and the tender and transparent pleasure and triumph on a runner’s face as they approach the finish line. We laughed at each other’s teary eyes and quivering lip.
And then off she went to run her own race.
It was all kind of wonderful. The running, the cheering, the back-slapping and the tremendously long line for the free beer for each runner.
It got me thinking about wonder and about cheering. I think we might cheer more if we wonder more. I mean the kind of wonder that is about sunsets, chocolate lab puppies (spoiler!), and saying, when we look at each other, something like this: “Well, would you look at that?” That’s what my father said as he skipped stones, gathered feathers, cracked butternuts and scattered wildflower seeds like a man planting crops to feed his family. That’s what he said when I sent him my first Reader’s Digest article. That’s what he said when he watched his grandchildren out in the world.
I want to be like my dad.
I want to be amazed by other people, and then tell them about it.
My eldest son Erik and I roamed through the Helen McNicoll exhibit on now at the National Gallery of Canada. McNicoll was a Canadian impressionist artist who did not have to wait to die to receive her accolades. Throughout the exhibit there are snippets of reviews from her time (1879-1915), applauding her work and calling it luminous (which it really was/is) and cheering (yes, cheering) her mastery of light.
A couple visiting the exhibit and strolling a few paintings behind us discussed McNicoll’s way with dappled sunlight.
“Wow,” said the woman. “Wow. Wow.”
“Yeah,” said the man. “Yeah. Yeah.”
“Her stuff is really something, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Wow!”
To their wows, I say: “Wow!” The couple seemed completely in the moment appreciating and exclaiming over the meadows, children, haystacks and warm squares of light that hung before them, created by a woman long gone but still alive in her art.
I wonder:
- Do we say “Wow!” enough?
- Do we have people we cheer with a homemade sign, teary eyes and tiny jumps?
- Do we have people who cheer us on? Gosh, we need that, and sometimes more than others.
(I’d like to say, if you need more, do more. But it’s not actually a magic formula of do more get more. That might not work. The reward is in the cheering on of others itself. We all know this already).
Here’s some insight on that. I had author and speaker Heather Thompson-Day on the Good Books Big Questions podcast this last season. I recommend all the conversations on the show, but I especially enjoyed Heather’s matter-of-fact position toward things like bullying, for example, and how to enter a room with positive thoughts about someone you are about to disagree with, or with whom you have some struggles.
Recently, Heather shared this familiar maxim on Instagram, but in a new way that I had not heard it used before: “If you see something, say something.” Usually we associate that advice with speaking up about an abandoned suitcase in an airport or a skulking stranger, but Heather used it to remind us to tell people about the good things you see in them. I love that.
If you see something, say something.
We don’t do that enough. That’s why, just the other night, I felt an urge to step out of the Costco checkout line (gasp!), and tell a woman with long silver hair she was beautiful. She seemed burdened to me, and alone, which might not have been the case at all.
Sometimes we all need to hear we are beautiful.
And why be afraid to waste a compliment? We can afford to be lavish with them. We carry a huge bouquet of them in our arms to choose from.
And finally, I saw a man on a motorcycle waiting at a red light behind a packed school bus, playing Rock Paper Scissors with a group of very enthusiastic grade school kids crammed into the back window of the bus that idled in front of him.
“Well, would you look at that?”
After the bus lumbered away from the intersection like a big old yellow dog standing up and gradually picking up some speed, I tried to catch the eye of the guy on the bike. I wanted to applaud, wave or give him a thumbs up for being so kind to the young strangers. The bus went straight, he roared right, and I turned left, so that didn’t happen. But I smiled all the way down Arlington.
“Guess what I just saw?” I said to my two sons, when I walked in the front door. They could not guess, didn’t even try, and they never would have gotten it anyway. Who could have guessed that? It was too weird and wonderful of a tiny little bubble that floated right past me and into the day.