Old Nike ads
In college, I decorated my dorm room with sayings and photos from magazines that inspired me. It’s interesting how many were Nike ads. I know they were about running or whatever sport, but I loved them for other reasons. I mean, I was completely un-athletic in college. Who am I kidding? I’ve always been completely unathletic. But ‘just do it’ tag line always resonated with me and it’s been a bit of an unofficial mantra forever. Talk is fine, but at some point, you have to just do it, you know? That and “bring it on” have kept me going at times.
Anyway, here I am- 22 years later - and I am trying to be a runner. I want to be a runner. I’m in love with the idea of running. I’m starting to be a runner. The problem is that I’m fundamentally lazy, and it’s really really cold outside. *sigh* So I’m filling the spaces I live in with inspiration that reminds me that I love running. It helps me get out the door at 7 am when it’s windy and 7 degrees outside.
22 years later, the text of one of those ads came to mind. Not all of it, but snippets of it. So I headed to Bing (which I think gives better results than Google) and looked for it. I’m so delighted that I found it. It’s just as inspiring today as it was then and I love it. I want to share it with you
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Why are we so hard on ourselves
and so much easier on others? Did somebody
say something once that stuck in our brains and won’t
go away? Did we mispronounce something in French,
did we trip in front of some guy, did we make some
huge mistake that we’ve never gotten over?
What haunts our fine bodies and our fine
hearts and makes our heads spin with an image
of ourselves we can’t accept? We tell our
friends not to be so hard on themselves and we tell our
loved ones not to be so hard on themselves and we tell
ourselves
we’re just not being hard enough.
We are such funny women sometimes. We
blame ourselves when blame does not apply (terrible
word, that blame). We feel guilty about what we should
have done better (terrible word, that should). We are
harder on ourselves, harder than we would be on
anybody else, anybody. Complete strangers! Big dogs!
People we don’t even like!
And the things we expect are so darn
weird, things our mothers once said we should be
able to do or our fathers wanted us to achieve or our
great Aunt Charlotte wanted us to try and they didn’t
know that their words would stick
like glue to our hearts with a list of
expectations wrapped around it. Look: all these
expectations get old, real old, and only you know
when to yell uncle.
Uncle. Uncle. Uncle.
Because for one moment of your life you feel like
feeling … perfect. You feel like dashing into those hills
or those open roads or right into the air itself
and that’s just what you might do
so Ha
You feel like that rusty old image you carry
is slipping away, right over the edge of a mirror and out
of view. You feel like moving and if you trip, you trip, if
you fall, you will get up. And the air feels like it will
carry you and push you and it’s like nothing your feared
it would be. And of course everything you expected it
would.
Just do it.
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Thank you, Nike.
