I find myself at crossroads,
With more roads than my eyes could ever perceive.
Each road wound into multiple pathways when I walked towards them.
When I turn back I can’t remember the way I wandered in,
Is it the world or is it my mind that deceives?

A million voices rise inside my head,
They echo inside my chest and its hollow silence.
I don’t know the difference between chaos and calm anymore cause the silence gives the voice to the voices.
Is it the voices or the voice of silence which I dread?

I quicken up my pace and break into a run to try break away from the haze.
I try to find answers to the questions that the voices pose,
But the answers I find are questions in themselves.
I’ve been running in circles with no end to this maze.

But there’s always this one voice trying to find its way,
Low in volume amidst the din but always fighting for its place.
I hear it loud. I hear it clear.
I wonder if I’m brave enough to listen to it. I try and run away.

I run faster trying to outrun it.
It gets stronger, the faster I run.
It’s as if the voice took over my pulse.
Maybe the voice is the pulse,
The voice of the heart.

The shrill of the silence dampens; the moment I recognise this,
As the sweat I break feels like the comforting warmth of winter morning sunshine.
The split second of a heartbeat often wins races between runners.
Maybe all they did was just listen to it.

The warmth grows and surges filling up the hollowness inside me,
As the voices become one with the one beating inside my chest.
Every artery, every vein resonates with it as the bloodstream flows in unison.
The haze disappears with the frosty air now feeling like the wind beneath the wings of my feet.

Legends carved their mark on the field with their runs.
But one never knows what flowed through them while they ran.
The circle I’m running in looks different now,
As I try to find what flows through me when I try to create a mark,
The circle isn’t a maze anymore. It is where I belong.

The circle on which mortals gave it their all,
To be written into history books, probably to immorality.
Where people with shoes on their feet and dreams in their sights dragged every inch of their soul,
Following the path, their heart beat towards,
Running in the circle called life.


A line from Nike’s mission reads, “If you have a body, you’re an athlete”.  Life is a sport. Each of us is a long-distance runner running on the track we choose to call life. Counting time,  ever-moving and dreaming of an ideal finish. We face our own sets of lows and doubtful moments. But as long as the heart is beating we must always strive to rise above them and find ways to reach the finish we aspire for. As the tagline of Nike says, “Just Do It.”

Inspired by the book “Shoe Dog”, a memoir by the creator of Nike, Phil Knight.

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