What Watching My Brother’s Race Today Taught Me About Who I Want To Become

Today my brother raced in the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon Series 5KM in Montreal, and I went to watch! As I saw him come around the corner for the final stretch, my heart filled with excitement. He had about 100 meters left. In my mind, there was no other option than to run with him from the spectator area and cheer my heart out. “Go Marcus, Gooo!!!” There were just a few guys ahead of him, and I knew those last efforts could be catalyzed by encouragement.

I ran after him, and my eyes welled with tears. I was surprised by my emotion. For an instant, I had a glimpse of what it might feel like to love your child. I had forgotten all about myself and only cared in that moment that my brother would have all his dreams come true. I was so proud.

After the race, we cheered with the Lululemon team (Marcus is one of their ambassadors) for the other distances – half-marathon and marathon. I experienced moments of surprising joy by simply hollering my lungs out with cheers of encouragement. Giving exhausted runners high fives as they ran past us was practically a spiritual experience.

Which made me have a few deep thoughts about life.

As I cheered and reflected on how good it felt, I wondered if this is what the next phase of my life could look like. In the first phase, it was all about me – growing up, developing my career, becoming and achieving –  a lot of self-focus. In this next phase, I’m asking myself if I can continue the work of the first phase and also begin to intentionally support other people’s successes.

I mean, I’ve always said I’m about other people. I flew off to Africa by myself when I was just 19 with ideas of changing the world. But I don’t know if I’ve ever felt it the way I did this morning. It’s one thing to want to embody a principle, and it’s also another thing to really embody it.

So, thanks bro. Not only did you place 5th out of 1357 participants with a time of 17:38, but you are helping me to begin becoming the next best version of myself. And for that, I just love you.

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What about you? How do you balance your own personal ambition with the time you take to support others in theirs?