PAIN IS TEMPORARY. QUITTING LASTS FOREVER.

Last week’s mission moment is below.

Kathy Quinn
Pain is Temporary, Quitting Lasts Forever
Lance Armstrong
7 Time Tour de France winner, this was written before he did his 5th.
 
 
“Are you sure?” I asked the doctor.
“I’m sure.”
“How sure?”
“I’m very sure.”
“How can you be so sure?
“I’m so sure that I’ve scheduled you for surgery at 7 a.m. tomorrow.”

Mounted on a light table, the X-ray showed my chest. Black meant clear; white meant cancer. My chest looked like a snowstorm.

What I didn’t and couldn’t address at the time was the prospect of life. Once you figure out you’re going to live, you have to decide how to, and that’s not an uncomplicated matter. You ask yourself: now that I know I’m not going to die, what will I do? What’s the highest and best use of my self? These things aren’t linear, they’re a mysterious calculus. For me, the best use of myself has been to race in the Tour de France, the most grueling sporting event in the world.

Every time I win another Tour, I prove that I’m alive—and therefore that others can survive, too. I’ve survived cancer again, and again, and again, and again. I’ve won four Tour titles, and I wouldn’t mind a record-tying five. That would be some good living.

But the fact is that I wouldn’t have won even a single Tour de France without the lesson of illness. What it teaches is this:

PAIN IS TEMPORARY. QUITTING LASTS FOREVER.