I am a Woman of "Action"

[threadwalker]

Think -->Decide -->Do

I think that's pretty much how I live my life.

In my journey to Triathalon, I want to participate in fitness fundraisers that support causes that I am passionate about.

I just finished registering for this race:
Susan G. Komen Foundation Race for the Cure, September 23, 2007, San Francisco

This link is for my personal "profile" page for the event. (and the slogan, "The Race is for a Day, the Fight is for Life".. yeah, that's mine, not theirs. I may not be the first to have expressed it, but those are my feelings)

http://race.sfkomen.org/site/TR?px=1055661&pg=personal&fr_id=1010&et=VL-hFP81RCMQVdS1wX9irw..&s_tafId=2862

It's a 5K race that is also a fundraiser for Breast Cancer research. I got to do a profile page which then forced me to spend a lot of time percolating on "why" I care about this cause and "why" doing a race (as opposed to a flat donation) serves any higher purpose than my own selfish desire for improved health.


"Why" I chose this cause is really easy. My little sister is a survivor. According to the statistics, a whole pack of my friends will be diagnosed with breast cancer. I don't want that to happen. Voila, let's find a cure.

The harder question was "why do a race?"

It started percolating in my head last week as I circled the "triathalon" idea and I thought "doing" something useful in my build up to a triathalon was very appealing. Therefore finding races that benefitted charities that I care about folded in nicely with that. But I had to wonder if the charity run was just a cover for my fitness-vanity/ego since I could just as easily sponsor another runner and skip the race myself. I don't want to "use" the charity as a cover for my ego. Basically, what do I bring to the table? If I can't answer that, then what's the point? I can just as easily tell people I'm sponsoring someone, right? And if they are inspired by my sponsorship, they can jump up and do the same.

I was still percolating as I registerd for the race. I'm not comfortable knocking on doors looking for donations so until I could find a good enough reason, I was going to keep it to myself.

Then I talked to Mrs. C at work. I mentioned to her that I was doing this race thing and what it was for. She started telling me how many of her family members died of breast cancer and she immediately offered to donate. Mr N overheard and asked for the link so he could donate. I wasn't soliciting donations and made it very clear that they didn't need to. But they want to. For whatever non-quantifiable reason that my math brain can't comprehend, the fact that I'm doing this and that they know me personally and for whatever other mysterious reasons, people who weren't going to donate are now donating.

Also, it just popped in my brain that when I sponsored a co-worker who was doing diabetes bike race and some very good friends who did the Avon 3-Day, my mom was the only person who was inspired by my sponsorship. It was not inspiring to anyone else that I talked to.

So maybe it is the interpersonal relationship. I'm not sure. But I'm already making a difference and a bunch of people at work are (as a result of this morning's water cooler discussion about races, breast cancer, etc)

-verbally committed to donating (even a mental donation that never materializes is a good thought spent on a good cause)
-taking steps to improve their own fitness
-going to do more early detection self-exams

I'm very surprised and excited. I'm glad that in even these small ways I "did" something and will continue to "do" something. Even if I don't understand how it works. I'm still not going to knock on doors for donations, but I will let people know about my participation in the race and take steps to raise awareness of breast cancer.

In response to Light_hands question about how to make a donation, I poked around on the website. You can follow the link above and then click on "support denise" and it will open a page for making donations.

Which amuses me: "Support Denise" should really say "Support the Cure", but I appreciate that they are trying to tailor this to me and my presumed need to feel supported.

Comments

[hrj.livejournal.com]

There's a very interesting underlying metaphoric structure to the whole genre of "doing activity X in support of situation/class of people Y". Maybe I'll post on it when I have time to do the job right (at the moment I'm skiving off from assessing Product Impact). But here's an example of what I'm talking about. There's a very common, very basic metaphor "achieving a purpose is moving through space to a goal". So you can be "getting closer to" an accomplishment; you can meet "roadblocks" in a process; etc. etc. So participating in a race in support of a process to achieve a purpose (working very hard here to avoid motion/goal language in talking about the metaphor) is, in part, reifying the metaphor and invoking a kind of sympathetic magic whereby moving through space to the goal-location "assists" achieving the purpose.

While there are any number of "supportive activity" events, I think this is part of the reason why runs/walks/bike rides/etc. are so popular for this purpose.

Anyway, more later when I have time. (Oooh! Oooh! I got to use the word "reify" in casual conversation!)

[thread-walker.livejournal.com]

and here I thought "reify" was a typo. Now I need to go look it up.