The Relay Race

None of us are self-made; we’re all the sum of our inheritance.

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
— Sir Isaac Newton

I recently celebrated my sixty-ninth birthday, and I spent some time doing what birthdays often encourage us to do: reflecting. Not just on the nearly 25,200 days I’ve been fortunate enough to be alive, but on something deeper.

For me to be born on my life’s Day One, back in 1957, an unbroken relay race had to occur. Thousands and thousands of people—virtually all whose names I’ll never know—had to survive long enough to pass the baton to the next runner. They all endured illness, disease, accidents, wars, economic hardship, dislocation, heartbreak, famines, and countless uncertainties we cannot begin to imagine today. Ultimately, they met the right person at the right moment. They started families. They persevered.

Had any one of those handoffs along the path leading to me failed, I would not be sitting here writing these words. Like all of us, I am the beneficiary of an astonishing chain of human connection.

We as a culture often celebrate individuality, and rightly so. Each of us is truly unique. The precise combination of experiences, choices, and DNA that created me has never existed before and will never exist again. But as I contemplate that uniqueness, I also realize that it’s built entirely upon dependence.

For much of my life I admired self-reliance. Independence was a virtue. People who embarked on paths little-traveled inspired me. Strength meant carrying your own load. Yet studying vulnerability has revealed to me a different lesson: none of us are self-made. Not one.

The deeper I examine my own story—and with age I find that story more compelling than in my younger years, when I obviously had little to look back on and seemingly limitless time ahead of me—the more I see the fingerprints of others. Parents, grandparents, teachers, mentors, friends, colleagues, rivals, soldiers, and family members all shaped who I have become. Long before them, countless ancestors—ordinary people living ordinary lives—created the possibility that I might exist at all.

That realization doesn’t make me feel smaller. No, it makes me feel grateful, part of a magnificent greater whole.

And that’s one of vulnerability’s most important gifts. Vulnerability allows us to acknowledge a truth that our pride often resists: we need one another. We always have and always will.

The older I get, and I suspect this is true of many, the less interested I am in standing apart and the more interested I am in understanding what connects us. Every person I meet is carrying their own relay baton. Every person is the product of a thousand lives, stories, sacrifices, failures, and second chances. Every person is, in their own way, a miracle of survival and connection.

As I mark another trip around our solar system, I think less about what I have accomplished and more about what I have inherited. The baton was passed to me through innumerable generations of people whose names are all but forgotten but whose impact is undeniable.

My responsibility now is simple. Carry my baton, meaningfully, proudly, and gratefully. Continue the process of passing it on. For I did not arrive here alone…and neither did you.