Running down antelope
The uniqueness of human persistence
A human can chase down an antelope, which can run 60 mph.
In a town of 2000 people somewhere deep in Louisiana, I’m listening to people tell stories for a radio show called This American Life. I toss a trash bag in a dumpster behind my family’s convenience store. I just finished an 8-hour shift, it’s 10 pm, and I have school tomorrow.
In my ears, Scott Carrier and his brother spend 12 years chasing antelope through the Mohave desert. Then they write a book about it.
Chasing down antelope feels impossible. 8 hours of non-stop running instead of standing behind a register? I could barely do the latter. In that forgotten alleyway next to a dumpster, listening to the whine of the cicadas, the life of getting to tell stories about chasing antelope feels even more like a dream.
And dreams run faster than us–in the short term.
Most people, as Henry David Thoreau said, “live lives of quiet desperation.” They have nothing in their life resembling their dreams. To chase them seems silly. Antelope can sprint 61 miles per hour. A fool’s errand.
Similarly, how could a human being out-sprint a wisp of a dream?
