What is in the word Inspiration?

When we decided to do this journey, I think both Cody and I thought "We will do a walk, we will hope to raise some money and we will try our best to make a small change in the world."  

As I have said before, this walk initially was just a thought of putting on a backpack and hitting the road.  Setting up a go fund me page and hope that maybe we could obtain our lofty goal.  As time ticked on, this became so much bigger then I could have ever expected (and for that matter bigger then Cody could have ever dreamt too).   We ended up blessed with places to stay, sponsorship to cover our costs, people bringing us stuff along our route.  I think what has been the hardest thing to comprehend is that we were inspirational.  Many might currently be thinking "Well of course you were, you did something I could never do and look at all the funds you raised"  Truly inspirational indeed right?  Well these words had to sit with me for sometime before they kicked in.  

Growing up I was bullied.  An incident in grade 3 decided my fate and I was in a class that did not change for the next 9 years.  The bullying followed me all those years.  I would race home on lunch break to get away from the school or afterschool so I would not have to face being taunted, whipped about in the school playground or field and called many names under the sun.  I have carried this with me for all my years.  Please do not feel bad!  I learned from it.  My first day walking up the stairs at SFU, I got to the top and thought to myself "I have a brand new start to my life"  Yes my life!  It is something however that is hard to shake.  I mean if a confrontation breaks out in front of me, I want to put my head in the sand and hide as I don't know what to do or say.   I guess you can say I shut down.  I reflect after on what I could have said or done but the words in that moment never come to me.  My flight or flight turns into flight every time.  

This brings to me the word inspirational.  I found myself at odds, being told we where inspirational.  Inspirational to me is Leon Logothetis who traveled the world without a penny to use and relied on the Kindness of Strangers to take him in over night and in the end gives back in a huge way to those who touched him.  Or how about the stories I learned along the way about others that have had far greater journeys then our own:  The Peace Pilgrim who walked for 28 years across the United States (over 40000km) to raise awareness for Peace, Or locally Joe Roberts who pushed a shopping cart across Canada for 17 months to raise awareness for homeless youth or Cole Choken who ran from Mexico to Calgary after having a dream, this dream led him to raising funds for Cancer.  These are inspirational stories that our journey has made known to us.  So why should we be inspirational?   Will I ever come to believe that we are? 

The shift came the day we came up with our motto:  Believe, Do, Achieve.  Yes we are an inspiration.  The journey does not have to take on a massive distance to be an inspiration, it just has to put a good feeling into another soul for it to be so.  So yes we are inspirational and yes we did it, I truly believe this.  The road may be tough ahead of you, you may think you can never do this but in my life I have learned on one too many an occasion to never say never.  Inspiration is all around us and now it lives also in me. 




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