I spoke to Chris (www.hearourvoicekenya.com) on Friday evening because I am flying out to Nairobi on Wednesday with my great friend Angela – Angela is a true Angel in every sense, in her generosity of spirit and through her support of others and also the beauty of her heart shines from her. She supported Mark’s @runwithmark sponsorship as he ran from Amsterdam to Barcelona and now she is supporting Chris in his work with the street children. I am so glad she is coming – we will be adventuring together. Chris said we need to hire a car and then drive along the Mombassa road on Thursday to find him. We plan to set off at dawn and hope to find him by lunchtime! Chris said that once I arrive and run with him the last stretch to the coast, that we will running through areas where the people there will never have seen a white person – ’so no crop tops’ he advised!
I got my Malaria tablets yesterday – so I am all set! I imagine that once I have returned to Africa – the place of my birth, I will be drawn back to visit West Africa and see where I sprung from and revisit the beach where I took my first running steps, barefoot of course – as a very little girl. My mother said that as soon as I could walk, I ran, everywhere, on my tippytoes the story goes – and that I never walked, I preferred to run. But I knew then what I wanted to do, and be – I knew that I wanted to run and be a runner.
There was a time when we all knew what we wanted to do and be. As children we all knew our preferences and our desires, our heart called us and we knew. Our heart still knows and that is why it is so important to relearn to listen to what your hearts says and where it tells you that you need to be going. It is a time of great upheaval on our planet and it is impossible to deny how much we are in need of healing. Healing happens through us all taking responsibility for our part, for our thoughts and actions, and recognising that any imbalance is also ours, that whatever we are witnessing in terms of discord, we can have a positive effect on by addressing the discord within ourselves. We all need to relearn that if we follow our intuition and our deepest truth within that this will make a difference to the planet and to the people around us. We can heal the planet as an individual and then in relationship with everyone we encounter, interaction by interaction, through crossing into the world of the other, ‘walking (or running!) a mile in their shoes’ – and through listening and validating their truth. This way we connect with one another and so have the opportunity to build a world based on love and truth and consideration for ourselves and others.
Running is connecting people and accessing the qualities of love and truth and support of one another – ‘Esprit de corp’ – in a way that I wouldn’t have imagined in the 70s when I started to compete and train – an unusal figure then, running out in the steets – but now, as Chris McDougall wrote about in his book ‘Born to Run’ we are discovering what the Tarahumara have never forgotten, that ‘the secret to happiness could be right at your feet’.
Related posts:
- Words make a difference
- Healing and inspiration through running
- Coffee, cake and the possibility of Kenya
