There's a small bookstore in my neighborhood called Tall Tales. It doesn't have nearly the selection of a Barnes & Noble, but that's one reason I like it. The woman who works there loves books, and she's good at helping you discover something new. Tell her what you've been reading, and she'll suggest something you might never have picked up yourself.

I'd been reading fiction for a while and wanted something different. She recommended All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley. After his older brother died of cancer, Bringley left his job at The New Yorker to become a security guard at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. He spent ten years surrounded by extraordinary works of art. At first, I found the book slow and skipped around. I nearly put it down, but something kept me reading.

Then I came across a passage that stopped me. Bringley writes:

Too many visitors think of the Met as a museum of art history, where the objective is to learn about art rather than from it.

I read that sentence a couple of times. There's a difference between visiting a museum to see famous paintings and standing in front of one long enough to discover something about yourself. One is about checking something off a list. The other is about experiencing it.

I've been thinking about how that applies to running. I've met people who want to run a marathon once, alongside other bucket-list goals like climbing a mountain or visiting Paris. They train, finish, collect their medal, and move on. I think that's wonderful. Running a marathon is a tremendous accomplishment, whether you do it once or twenty times.

Yet running offers something more if you stick with it. You begin to appreciate the early mornings, the changing seasons, and the people you meet. You discover things about yourself that have little to do with finishing times. Some of my favorite running memories are things I never would have experienced if I'd stopped after my first marathon.

I've run enough marathons that I can barely remember some of my finishing times. But I remember the people I've met, the places I've run, and the things I've learned about myself. None of those were on my bucket list.

Happy running!
George