Can You Outrun Change?
I was once passed while running a 10K race—by a full blown Mariachi band playing Cielito Lindo.
Why am I telling you this?
Besides just getting the embarrassment of it all off my chest, it's also to act as a lead-in to a full-blown discussion about what to do when you are overtaken by something you don’t expect, and may have no respect for. Yet it still overtakes you.
It always starts so innocently. There I was, running my race along with 20,000 of my closest friends.
Finding my power, redefining my "edge". Going where no man had gone before. Except…that's when I heard it. The high pitch of the trumpet, the thumping of the bass guitar, the semi-perfect harmony, the GRITO! Unmistakable. Had I passed out from my superhuman effort? Was this an aberration? Was I actually being resuscitated at Matt's El Rancho with a restorative margarita? ¡Si, si!
But no. No! I was still in the race, running a bit more winded now, but keeping my pace. Yet I could sense them gaining on me, only a few meters behind. I tried to be casual, or at least as casual as I could be while being chased by a group of trumpet-playing, guitar-strumming men in charro suits. It was so unnerving. I’d never seen a Mariachi band in a race before, though it was quite common to run beside folks in chicken suits, or someone dressed up like Willie Nelson, complete with a 3-foot long doobie filled with dry ice to look like…Holy Smoke! I was about to be passed by a legend. Who hadn't heard of these guys? The house band at the bar in Jorge's Mexican Cantina. The MARIACHI KINGS!!
Image generated by AI (and definitely not really of the famous Mariachi Kings)
That sound: unique and unmistakable. Particularly the heroic, harmonic finishes with which they imbue every song, transforming even the song about a lost chicken into a triumph. And to my dismay, the Mariachi Kings had now begun to sing the classic Cielito Lindo (Ay yi yi yi, canto y no llores!). They were gaining on me, moving ever closer even as I tried to run ever faster. I was clearly toast, or perhaps burnt tortilla.
It was no longer a fair fight. Me, kitted out in my Lululemon running outfit complete with perspiration-wicking outer layer, now in a full-on sprint to keep from being overtaken. They, in their magnificent Norteño-caballero, ranchero, dinero, prospero-silver dollar button-laden BLACK Mariachi bad-ass garb, complete with cowboy boots (for God's sake!) AND sombreros, were upon me. Singing, in perfect step, “Ay yi yi yi” as they passed in sync with their perfect strumming rhythm. At that moment I was such a loser. They, my amigos, were magnificent. I screamed in protest as they overtook me:
“¡BASTARDES!”
But no one listens to the man who has just been passed.
Lately it seems as though we live in a world in which we are always being overtaken. It's called change. Change is that Mariachi band, gaining on you.
What can be done when you hear the first notes of that trumpet? Like me, will you just try to run faster? A worthy solution, for those who always have faster in them. But who can always outrun change? Almost no one. Eventually you exhaust yourself, and change passes you by anyway. And other changes, not all Mariachis, perhaps Oompah brass bands in lederhosen, Apache dancers with their drums and deerskin moccasins (who are very fast indeed) or, and this is the worst one to be passed by, a full symphony orchestra.
Another AI image (as if you couldn’t tell!)
How do they run so swiftly while towing a timpani and a grand piano? You will learn that various change is always gaining on you, in all of its many forms, musical tastes and colorful garb. No matter how or why or what, being passed is no fun.
Why was I so perturbed at being overtaken? Perhaps I was so busy worrying about how it would all look and how it would make me feel if I was passed in a race by a band of slightly overweight middle-aged dudes wearing cowboy boots and sombreros and playing a fairly decent version of Cielito Lindo. I failed to fully appreciate the experience because I was running from that infamous thief: “Comparison!” — the thief of joy.
It was not the Mariachi Kings who passed me that day. It was the remnants of my younger self —who I presumed would have never let a fat guy in a sombrero pass him twenty years ago. My younger self stole the joy of the day, the magnificence of the song complete with mandatory grito (that high pitched yell of which the Texas "YeeHaw!" is a descendent) after the Ay yi yi yi, canto y…
Image: AI again
What would have been a good run, both on the day and twenty years prior, was lessened by being pursued by the image of my younger self. Those of us who are constantly chased in life always get caught, or in this case, passed up. Change is inevitable. So what? Only your younger self even gives a hoot.
It turns out that being passed by the Mariachi Kings was not the end of the race for me, not even the end of that particular race.
As the Mariachis disappeared into the distance, I did something that those in despair often do not consider. I kept running.
I finished the race with a decent time. The sun still shone. The birds kept singing, perhaps even a bit more joyously, with chirps that may or may not have sounded vaguely like Ay yi yi yi.
At the finish line I looked for those Mariachis, but they were nowhere to be found. It occurred to me that they may have been an aberration after all. Something conjured in my own mind to tell me that I might no longer be able to run that 10K. But I had finished that race, and there would be many others, both on and off the race course, in the years to come. Change had passed me by that day, but I would end up lapping it many times over in the coming years. How? It has a little something to do with the contemplation of being passed, passing, and letting things pass.
It's not exactly true that you are either passing or being passed. Or either running away or running toward. Sometimes you’re just running. This can be pleasant, meditative; or it can feel like a hamster wheel. It's all up to you.
It is said that all things must pass. I say, let them! Even if they are the Mariachi Kings. Because it is also true that all things must get passed. And when that happens, let it happen—and then suit up and show up again, ready for the next race. Because if there is one thing for sure, it's that there will always be another race. Maybe this time you will be the one passing those Mariachi Kings. ¡Bastardes!