Another Memorial Day has come and gone, which means another year of completing Murph. I think I’ve done Murph almost 15 times. As is has become a tradition, Tanya and I will usually get together the night before and watch the movie “Lone Survivor.” This is the actual story of how Murph died. He sacrificed his life for his teammates by crawling out onto a peak with no cover in order to make a phone call to share their location with home base. The movie depicts this almost exactly as it happened, according to the actual lone survivor.
The whole point of doing Murph to me has always been about just that. Sacrifice. It sucks. I never look forward to doing it, and now as I am getting older, it might even be worse the days after rather than during the workout. It takes quite some time to recover from. I do, however, look forward to being in those moments of suck during the workout. Given the current climate of life in our state and the world, I look forward to Murph every year because it’s one of the times where we all acknowledge something greater than ourselves.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to start walking during the workout. It’s easy to just skip out on the range of motion a little bit during the bodyweight movements. Everything in your brain and body is telling you, “let’s just stop doing this.” I’m sure that’s almost exactly what Murph’s brain and body were telling him when he was debating on whether or not to climb out and make that phone call. Maybe he’s still alive if he doesn’t do that. Maybe he’s the lone survivor instead of his friend and teammate. That’s just not who Murph was though. He made the ultimate sacrifice.
We talk a lot about heroes and who is a hero in today’s world and something dawned on me while I was watching the movie Sunday night. It’s definitely a word we throw around too loosely. Heroes usually die in the act of being a hero. That is what makes them heroic. The best way to honor these heroes is by sacrificing something for someone else. It doesn’t have to be big or small. Just put someone else’s needs before yours today. The world will be a better place for it.
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