There is Power in the Banana

Today, I find myself racing around attempting to put the house in order as I prepare to be out of town.  I double stocked the essentials, milk, bread and bananas.  Ah yes, bananas.  It would seem I can never have enough of these in my house as they always go quickly.  My mom had always told me that the mushy banana makes for some amazing banana bread.  I wouldn't actually have first hand knowledge of that as they never last that long.  There seems to be an art to buying bananas.  The minimal amount of green, not quite ripe, wrap the end in saran wrap to keep it fresh longer....  it's quite a process.  As it turns out, a kid school project I did, well the politically correct phrase is "helped with," taught me bananas are actually a berry, really?  What about that thing resembles a berry? They range in sweetness from the starchy plantain to regular dessert bananas and emit small amounts of radioactivity due to their potassium content.

In just a few days, my team and I will once again take on The Dopey Challenge.  It is running a 5k, a 10k, a half marathon and a full marathon in four days.  It is a fairly tall order.  For some of us it is the second time around, and for others, the first.  I have found my mind reviewing the races of last year, there was the 35 degree chilly start to the 5k, the beautiful sunrise over Epcot with a friend during the 10k, my first half running with my son, and ultimately the enduring of  that special area of hell last year during the full marathon known as mile 17.  This is the exact spot I entered ESPN Wide World of Sports for what seemed to be three of the longest miles in my running career.  Back and forth, weaving in and around all the various sports fields in 87 degree heat, but never seeming to get anywhere.  It felt never ending, and every time I would check my mileage on my watch it didn't seem to move.  It was like being trapped in a vortex of exhaustion with no end in site.

Then it happened.  Mile 19.  The single greatest thing that my team would talk about for the entire year.  The banana.  The magical banana.  At mile 19 there was a guy in a banana suit handing out bananas.  They were cold, the peel had been started and we suspect they were laced with something,  because it was the single greatest tasting banana of my entire life, any of our lives really.  I have never tasted anything like that before or since.  That banana, plus the encouragement of an amazing teammate got me exactly where I needed to be, the finish.  The glorious time of happiness and celebration with people who matter a whole lot to me. 

A couple of weeks ago, I boldly challenged the universe to hit me with it's best shot.  I was operating on the assumption that incredible growth comes out of adversity.  That adversity was really more of an opportunity.  I should have known that the universe is always up for a challenge, and in the last few days our family has lost a close member for no good reason and other extremely difficult crises have cropped up.  All these things showed me maybe testing the universe for a lesson in adversity was not the greatest idea I ever had, as the last few days have had me working my way through a seemingly endless exhausting maze wondering when it was going to end. 

As I took some time to catch my breath today, I realized that I really did have a collection of proverbial banana guys along the way.  They came in various shapes and sizes with different levels of sweetness like the flowers from a coworker, a ride home for the kids while I was at work, the silent taking over of the daily chores of my business for a bit by my partner, or the positive radiating simple texts from distant friends and family sent to light up my day.  Maybe I haven't quite seen the glory of coming out the other side of things just yet, but focusing on the banana men along the way has certainly made the struggle a little bit more tolerable. 

So, going forward, maybe the trick is to try to not get lost in the vortex of the adversity. Instead realize things may not always be as they seem, after all a banana is a berry.  That through the adversity  resuscitation of spirit can happen even in the absence of the grand gestures.  If we look hard enough we see it is the little tiny offerings of others that collectively have the power to push us forward right into the aftermath party where we can celebrate with our own banana tribe.  Because I am sure in THAT celebration it will be a whole lot easier to see that the best is yet to come.