Vol. 5, Issue 11: The White Sands of New Mexico
On Ephemera and What It Means To Be Here Now
Not to brag*, but I ran my 3rd IRONMAN 70.3 last month in New Mexico.
*Definitely bragging, but you can hold your applause until the end
It was by far the most difficult one of the three that I’ve run. The course itself was borderline sadistic. The last 15 miles of the bike ride were almost entirely a climb, and I actually fell off my bike during the last 3 mile stretch. As soon as you got off the bike and hopped on the run course, the first half mile or so of the run was basically straight uphill, and then the 3rd mile was also almost entirely uphill. And then you looped that two more times, so if you’re doing the math, most of the mile between 11 and 12 of the race was uphill.
So it was a lot. But races like this have a really big effect on me, and not just physically. I have a lot of time to myself to think*.
*7 hours, 37 minutes, 48 seconds to be exact
I picked the race in New Mexico because I’d never been there before and this felt like a great way to do something I love and see someplace I never had. And it really was the right decision. The state is stunning. I flew into Albuquerque and spent two nights there and … that was a vibe. From there, I drove the 3 hours south to Ruidoso for the race.
Ruidoso is a small town in the southwest of the state, closer to El Paso, TX than Albuquerque. It’s also at 7500 feet of elevation, which I didn’t plan for since all of my training was effectively at sea level.
After the race and since I was already in the area, I decided to take an extra day and go to White Sands National Park. I don’t think it’ll come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows me that I’m not much of an outdoorsman. Camping is a deeply personal nightmare for me, but walking, hiking and seeing the beauty of this planet that we’ve inherited* is right in my wheelhouse, as long as I’ve got somewhere to stay that has a roof and plumbing.
*I said this on LinkedIn, but it continues to baffle me that we have this beautiful planet with all these amazing natural phenomena and we decided to turn it into a race to see who could work the hardest.
On the way, I stopped a local Walmart to pick up a small sled because one of the coolest parts of the entire place is that you can sled down the gypsum sand hills that extend out for acres and acres. Well, I couldn’t because I’m big and heavy and I didn’t have anything to lubricate the sled, but smaller, lighter people were doing it while I was there. I hung around through sunset, as you can see in the picture above and it’s an absolutely stunning sight to watch the sun go down in that part of the world.
As I walked back to my car to head back to my hotel for the night, I noticed all the footprints and sled tracks in the sand. They’d be gone the next day. Overnight, the wind comes through and wipes away any evidence that anyone had ever been there. And the next day when people come back, the process starts all over again. We make a mark and nature refreshes and erases that mark completely.
People think I’m weird when I tell them this, but I take great comfort in the notion that 100 years from now, no one will remember my existence at all*. I won’t even be a footnote in history, just one of billions of people who stayed here for a cosmological minute and then disappeared forever. Most people find that daunting. I find it empowering.
*For years, I had a lot of trouble journaling because in the back of my mind, I put a lot of pressure on myself to make everything I wrote as meaningful as possible because I wanted to make sure it would be poignant after I die. Yes, I’m that level of ridiculous
I think the root of the issue is that people tend to confuse the notion of ephemera with insignificance. Something can be temporary and still matter tremendously. Sunsets are ephemeral. Conversations are ephermal. Your childhood is ephemeral. The kindness of a stranger giving you a couple of bucks in the grocery store checkout line because you came up short is an interaction that lasts 30 seconds. But the impact of those things can be very significant. They don’t have to be lasting to matter.
All of this accumulation, monument building, fame seeking, they can have meaning in the moment. But underneath all of that is the same insecurity and desperation about being forgotten. The request is very simple. Don’t let me disappear. But we disappear anyway.
And the evidence of that is pretty obvious. Do you know much about the richest person in Kansas in 1890 or the biggest stage actor of 1910 or even the most famous politician in 1862 not named Abraham Lincoln? Because all of those people at one time walked into a room and the room fell silent to pay attention to them. They were talked about, they had allies and enemies, newspapers tracked them. Their lives felt enormous in the time they lived.
But now? They’re with the stars. Gone forever and forgotten.
And even Lincoln. We know who he is, but we have no idea what it was like to be him on a random Tuesday at age 37. History preserves the big stuff, but all the important little stuff is gone forever. And so if permanence isn’t possible, then it absolutely cannot be the measure of life.
And that leaves two possible conclusions to draw: either nothing lasts, so nothing matters or nothing lasts, so everything we do now matters enormously.
The notion that, like the footprints on the hills at White Sands, any evidence of my personal existence will be wiped away signifies more to me than just the mere fact that I’ll be wiped away. It frees me to be as present as I possibly can now, because now is the only time that matters. And I’m sure some people use that as a mechanism to validate all manner of shitty behavior, but I choose to interpret it as how can I take the time to make the world that I live in as beautiful as possible for everyone.
I choose that conclusion because my footprint doesn’t have to remain in the sand for it to matter. Someone could have been walking beside me and maybe that made my walk in the sand better. Maybe it made theirs better too. For me, that’s enough. We’re given this infinitesimally small time here. We don’t know why or how. We know with a great deal of certainty that eventually every trace of us will disappear. And bafflingly, somehow when confronted with that reality, some people choose to use their cosmological minute to make someone else’s cosmological minute worse.
That’s crazy to me. I choose to be present.
The fact that my footprints get erased isn’t tragic. It’s what makes room for tomorrow’s footprints. My kids get their turn and others get theirs. Generations of people arrive at the park, walk on the same dunes, make their footprints, gets stuck on a sled at the top trying to get the to bottom, watch a sunset and then leave. And hopefully while they’re there, they don’t kick sand in someone else’s face.
And then the landscape resets for whoever comes next.
What now?
Well, a few things: my kids go back to school this week, which seems insane that it’s time.
I have a few trips planned to New York this fall, so if you’re around and would like to catch up, well that sounds like the cat’s pajamas or the bee’s knees or whatever animal body part you prefer.
Keep listening to Leadership In and if you want to be a guest or believe you know someone who would make a great guest, well why not write to us and tell us why
That’s all for this week, friends. Until next time.