“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you c*** alive and then go do that.”
- Dr. Howard Thurman, Author, philosopher, preacher and civil rights leader

We’ve all seen the movie, The Matrix. Thomas “Neo” Anderson enters the Matrix to meet the Oracle, find his destiny, and figure out who he is in an attempt to touch the future. He meets a kid. The kid bends the spoon with his mind only to explain that there really is no spoon. Neo walks into the kitchen and is greeted by the Oracle:

“You know why Morpheus brought you to see me?”

“I think so,” Neo answers.

“So? What do you think? You think you’re the one?”

“I don’t know.”

She gestures to a wooden plaque over the entrance to the room, the sort of plaque your grandma would have, except that the words are in Latin:

Temet Nosce.

“You know what that means?” she asks. “It’s Latin. Means, ‘Know thyself.’”

When PowerBar called and asked me if I’d be interested in blogging for the site, I agreed. Now I just had to figure what it was I wanted to write for my first entry.

When I write, I start by writing what it is I want to convey – it’s a Stephen Covey, “begin with the end in mind,” sort of thing.

C.S. Lewis, of Chronicles of Narnia fame, once told his son, “First be sure that you know exactly what you want to say. Then be sure you have said exactly that.”

I needed to think on the former before working on the latter. Before I get to the good stuff, allow me to offer the two-peso version of my life over the past few years. In 2004 I was seventh at the Trials, in 2005 I accepted roses and grinned like a fool on Reality TV [Editors Note: Cox appeared on the 3rd season of ABC’s “The Bachelorette”], went through a very dark time, and my dad was diagnosed with cancer. Like I’ve said before, if I live a thousand years it’ll be tough to top my terrible 2005. In 2006 we laid my dad to rest; in 2007 I came back to running, qualified for my third Olympic Trials, didn’t make the Team, injured my arch, and got married. Like I said, the two-peso version.

Now back to the Oracle’s sign, that’s the key – well, that and time - that’s what I want to discuss.

I know this is a running blog and I’ve heard hosts of people talk about their work-life, home-life, school-life and athletic-life but I don’t make any distinction; to me it’s all just life. The greatest thing about running, and life, is that you can do something about yesterday today. It’s like what Jon Foreman of Switchfoot said:

“Yesterday is a wrinkle on your forehead,
Yesterday is a promise that you’ve broken.
Don’t close your eyes; don’t close your eyes,
This is your life and today is all you got now
And today is all you’ll ever have.”¹

Tomorrow is a lie; all we have is today.

The first time I heard Billy Graham speak, he spoke about time. He said that time was something proportioned equally to all mankind. His message resonated and has stuck with me through the years. Black, red, yellow, white, rich, poor, good looking, bad looking, fast, slow, well spoken, and not so well, smart, dumb, tall, short, boy, girl, man, woman, we have all been entrusted with the same 24 hours.

Take my friend Ryan Hall, America’s Kenyan, the guy was doing 50-minute 10-mile tempos and running hundred mile weeks at altitude in high school. He spent his time running. My long time friend and silver medalist training partner Meb Keflezighi spent years honing his craft in San Diego, and continued in Westwood and Mammoth Lakes with his coach Bob Larsen.

In The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien said, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” Tolkien would know. He spent 14 years writing a novel that today serves as the benchmark for all fictional literature.

What I’m saying is this: Things take time. In this fast-food, right away, have it now, toss it in the microwave, pop a pill and take a bow society we live in, patience has truly become a virtue. So where should we spend our time? Well, the answer is different for all of us. This is where we find ourselves back at Temet Nosce.

Know thyself. It’s been a tenet to live by since the beginning of time.

The quote is said to have first appeared over the door of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece, a place that housed the Delphic Oracle. The sign there was obviously written in ancient Greek, not Latin like the Wachowski’s Oracle. The correlation wasn’t a coincidence; the Wachowski’s know their stuff, they’re subtext kings.

Inspired by the shrine at Delphi, Socrates, at his trial for heresy, said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the people of Galatia he told them to, “make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.”²

And in Paul’s letter to his young charge Timothy he said, in reference to Tim’s special gifts, “Cultivate these things. Immerse yourself in them… Don’t be diverted. Just keep at it.”³
Temet Nosce. Make an exploration of our gifts and talents, know who we are, then do our creative best with what we’ve been given, cultivating and immersing ourselves in them.

Examine, know, cultivate, immerse.

Greatness requires examination. Greatness requires hard, immersing work.

If there is one thing I’ve learned in all my years of being around talented athletes, artists, musicians and businessmen it’s that greatness begins when one deliberately narrows their interests. We don’t need people who do a host of things pretty good, we need people who do their one thing great.

I once read that our design and desires reveal our destiny - right up the Temet Nosce alley. What is our makeup? What are we passionate about? What do we love? And like Thurman said in the intro, what makes us c*** alive? Design + Desires = Destiny.

This is an inalienable truth; our light shines brightest when we do the very thing for which we are destined. We step into our destiny when we know ourselves and are faithful stewards of the talents and time entrusted to us.

So as we start another year and set sail out on the seas of our dreams my charge to all of you is to take some time and examine yourself.

Tomorrow is a lie; today is where we touch eternity.

Examine yourself. A great way to start is to write out all the things you love doing. The things you are passionate about, the things you love most, the thing that makes you c*** alive. Like Tom Delong of Angels & Airwaves said, “…wish it now, …wish it loud, …say it now, …say it loud.”

If I were to add anything to Tom’s lyric it would be to “write it now, write it loud.” Write your goals and dreams down; write them loud, LIKE THIS. Then put it somewhere you’ll see it everyday - because you have to have dreams in order for them to c*** true.

If you’re a runner, write how fast you want to run. If you’re a mom, write the ways you will love your husband and nurture your children, if you’re a student, write the grades you hope to get. The main thing is to have a course to run. Plan the work and work the plan. You get the idea. Another great idea is to create a personal mission statement, I write a new one each year. It will change over time and if you keep them you’ll see how you’ve evolved.

For those of us who are out there chasing our dreams, Olympic and otherwise, we must lead by example; we must inspire by example, because talk is cheap and words without works is dead.

Track seven of the new Angels & Airwaves I-Empire album has five words closing out the song. For those of you that have read Dave Eggers’ book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius think of the song’s five closing words as the soundtrack to Dave’s venting rant as he ran under Toph’s Frisbee toss at the end of his memoir. The lyrics aren’t as explicit as Eggers but the sentiment is the same. Those five words are my charge to you.

“What are you waiting for?”

Written while listening to: Jon Foreman’s Fall & Winter EP, former Blink 182 front man Tom Delong’s band Angels & Airwaves I-Empire album, Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama Live at the Apollo DVD, U2’s 7 album, Jeff Buckley’s Live At Sin-é DVD and Dan Browne blowing up my cell.

“I think I owe my success [as a journalist] to having listened respectfully and rather bashfully to the very best advice, given by all the best journalists who had achieved the best sort of success in journalism; and then going away and doing the exact opposite… I have a notion that the real advice I could give to a young journalist is simply this: to write an article for The Sporting Times and one for The Church Times and put them in the wrong envelopes… What is really the matter with almost every paper, is that it is much too full of things suitable to the paper.”
- G.K. Chesterton