When I was running hill repeats in the cemetery this morning, a scene from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (which Aaron Sorkin used in an episode of “West Wing”) kept playing in my mind.
Butch and Sundance have been running for days and they find themselves at the edge of the ravine that overlooks a river. They’re faced with two options: stay and likely get shot or jump. The two of them start arguing about who’s going to jump first and finally Redford (Sundance) says he’s can’t jump because he can’t swim. Paul Newman starts laughing and says, “You can’t swim?! It’s the fall that’s going to kill you!”
I started training today for a trail race at the end of the summer that has 4,300 feet of elevation. It’s not the climbing that scares me. In fact, running up hills has become a strength and I enjoy the empowerment. It’s the descent that scares me. I’m terrified of falling, of hurting myself and everything that fall would then bring.
I’ve always been scared of heights and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. But if this race has 4,300 feet of vert, that means I also have 4,300 feet to run down. So unless I give up the race, I’ll be forced to face that fear head on. … I won’t give up the race, so we see where this is going.
That Butch and Sundance story is a metaphor and it works on so many levels. Sorkin uses it when the West Wing staff are worried a poll is going to make it seem like that’s the reason they’re disclosing the president’s health problem to the country (not the fact that the president deliberately deceived the voters about his illness).
Whether it’s President Bartlett, Butch and Sundance’s jump off the cliff, my fear of heights, or any other problem we deeply fear but need to face, the lesson in that story is the same — Nothing about the larger terrifying issue matters if we can’t get beyond the “smaller,” but more deadly issues at hand.