YOU ARE ETERNAL
Make him proud
Holiday season, a time for contemplation and mindfulness. Time to reflect on accomplishments and failures. To forgive and give up. Say you ran a marathon, your first or perhaps your 20th. It’s been a few weeks (months?), but your friends, family, and co-workers have widely ignored your accomplishment. You didn’t expect much. A simple congrats would have sufficed. You’re disappointed, considering that you endured their snooze epics about golfing, fishing, or Nordic walking. Your friend J may have asked politely how long the marathon was this time before moving on to his adventures in competitive baking. Use the high-alcohol and low-meaning pagan season for a thorough make-over of all your relationships. Eight prompts on how to KonMari your social life and possibly purge all non-runners.
#1 Limitless: Binge-watch the TV doc series Limitless with Chris Hemsworth and cancel the New Year’s All-You-Can-Eat-Oyster-Bash for a polar plunge. Declare yourself immortal.
#2 Medal: Wear the monster on every occasion. With the lanyard at the office party, at your daughter’s ballet performance, during marriage counseling. Ignore your therapist’s nonplussed question of whether you really won the race. Do not tell anyone that everyone crossing the finishing line gets this memento.
#3 Wisdom: As the self-proclaimed ambassador, sports physician, and philosopher, fill awkward silences before the eggnog kicks in with contemplative platitudes: Life, marriage, and career is a marathon, not a sprint. Everything you ever wanted to know, you can find out in 26.2 miles.
#4 Jargon: Paraphrase and cite Limitless’ dizzying terminology and pseudoscience. Speak with an Australian accent. Try not to laugh. Promise your lazy brother longevity and claim that the Alzheimer's APO4 gene also runs rampant in your family. Use the deviled eggs to dramatize your digressions into gastroenterology.
#5 Data: Fluff your expertise with numbers and statistics. Calories, distance, temperature, lung capacity, and most importantly: speed. If your aunt, despite ingesting 4.5 Mistletoe Shots, interjects that Hemsworth hates running: congratulations, she's listening!
#6 History: Start from the very beginning with the very first marathon. In Athens. Mention the god Hermes with his winged sandals. The guy from the legal department will know that Hermes was Roman. Emphasize that a lot has happened since then, and threaten to enlighten him with every detail. Introduce the Germanic god Thor and the Marvel movie to get back to Chris Hemsworth.
#7 Coaching: At larger, anonymous events, offer your expertise as a running coach. Cite the most memorable lines from Limitless as if they were your own. Quote an astronomical fee for your service and hope never to see the stranger again.
# 8 Self-Care: Leave early and squeeze in a little bedtime jog. Tug yourself in and sniff your ex's or my pillow which you haven’t washed since 2006, visualize you-know-who and listen to his 51-second motivational clip on Youtube before you drift off.
51 Seconds of Chris Hemsworth Telling You How Amazing You Are!
December 2022
