cabinet. They melted like those globular frosty clouds that fly out when you breathe. Faces, numbers, decisions that once seemed urgent and unconditionally unchangeable, they all sunk into oblivion.

All that remains, however, is one comforting certainty, one stabilizing truth that will never leave us. At the age of 24, I really had a Crazy Idea, and somehow, despite the dizziness of existential angst, the fears about the future and self-doubt that I experience, like all young people over 20, but not yet 30 years old, I really came to the conclusion that crazy ideas created the world. History is one long hymn to crazy ideas. The things I loved most in life—books, sports, democracy, free enterprise—began with crazy ideas.

However, there are few ideas that are as crazy as my favorite pastime - running. It is heavy. Painful. Risky. The rewards are few and far from guaranteed. When you're running on an oval treadmill or on a deserted road, you have no real destination. At least not one that would fully justify your efforts. The action itself becomes a destination. The point is not only that there is no finish line ahead, but that you yourself determine where it should be. Whatever pleasure or benefit you derive from running, you must find it within yourself. It's all about how you frame what you do and how you sell it to yourself.

AT THE AGE OF 24 I REALLY CONCLUDED THAT THE WORLD IS CRAZY IDEAS.

Every runner knows this. You run and run, leaving mile after mile behind you, and you never really know why. You tell yourself that you're chasing some goal, following some impulse, but you're actually running because the alternative to running - stopping - scares you to death.

So that morning in 1962, I said to myself: let everyone call your idea crazy ... just keep moving. Do not stop. Don't even think about stopping until you reach your goal, and don't worry too much about where it is. Whatever happens, just don't stop.

It was quick, prophetic, urgent advice that I managed to give myself, unexpected as a bolt from the blue, and somehow I was able to use it. Half a century later, I believe this is the best advice, if not the only one, that any of us should ever give.

Part one
Well, here, you know, you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place! If you want to get to another place, then you need to run at least twice as fast.

Lewis Carroll.
Through the mirror and what Alice saw there, or Alice through the looking glass
crazy idea
When I brought up the subject with my father—when I mustered up the courage to talk to him about my Crazy Idea—I made sure it happened as the evening wore on. It was the best time to communicate with dad. He then relaxed, having had a good dinner, stretched out his legs in his vinyl chair in the corner where he watched TV. Until now, I can, throwing my head back and closing my eyes, hear the laughter of the audience in the TV studio and the harsh sounds of the musical screensavers of his favorite TV series Caravan of Wagons and Rawhide.

His constant favorite was Red Buttons. Each episode began with Red's song: "Ho-ho, hee-hee ... strange things are happening." I placed a straight-backed chair next to my father, gave him a weak smile, and waited until another commercial break. I rehearsed many times in my mind what to say and how to say it, especially where to start. “Uh, dad, do you remember that Crazy Idea I had at Stanford…?”

It happened in one of my senior classes, in an entrepreneurship seminar. I wrote a coursework in my specialty about shoes, and it went from being a run-of-the-mill assignment to an all-consuming obsession. As a runner, I knew a thing or two about running shoes. As a business enthusiast, I knew that Japanese cameras had made an impressive breakthrough in a camera market that had previously been dominated by the Germans. Therefore, I argued in my written work that Japanese sneakers can have a similar effect. This idea interested me, then inspired me, and finally conquered me. It seemed so obvious, so simple, so potentially huge.

I spent many weeks preparing my term paper. I moved into the library, absorbing everything I could find about imports and exports and how to start a company. Finally, like required, I made a formal presentation of my term paper in front of my fellow students, who reacted with formal boredom on their faces. Nobody asked a single question. My passion and energy were met with heavy sighs and blank stares.

Профессор думал, что моя crazy idea заслуживает внимания: поставил мне «отлично". But that's all. At least that was supposed to be the end of it. I didn't stop thinking about my coursework. For the rest of my time at Stanford, during every morning run, and up to that point in the television corner of our house, I thought about how to go to Japan, find a shoe company there, and pitch my Crazy Idea to the Japanese in the hope of getting more enthusiastic from them. reaction than from fellows to hear that they would like to partner with a shy, splinter-thin boy from sleepy Oregon.

I also played out in my mind how I would make an exotic trip to Japan and back. How can I leave a mark on the world, I thought, if I don't get out to see it first? Before a big race, you always want to walk on the treadmill to try it out. Traveling around the world with a rucksack on my back, I reasonably concluded, might be just the thing. At the time, no one was talking about bucket lists (lists of cherished desires that a person intends to achieve for the rest of his life. - Approx. Per.), But I think this concept is closest to what I had in mind. Before I died, grew old or wallowed in everyday trifles, I wanted to visit the most beautiful and amazing corners of the planet.

And the most sacred. Of course, I wanted to try different food, hear different language, experience a different culture, but what I really craved was the capital C connection. I wanted to experience what the Chinese call Tao, the Greeks call Logos, the Hindus call Jnana, the Buddhists call Dharma. What Christians call the Holy Spirit. Before embarking on my own personal journey through life, I thought, let me first understand the greater path that humanity has traveled. Let me explore grandiose temples and churches, sanctuaries, holy rivers and mountain peaks. Let me feel the presence of... God?

Yes, I told myself, yes. It is God - there is no better word for it.

But first I had to get approval from father.

Moreover, I would need his money.

A year before, I had already mentioned my intention to make a big trip, and it seems that my father was then ready to listen to my request. But he must have forgotten about it. And I clicked on that, of course, adding my Crazy Idea, this daring detour trip to visit Japan? To organize your company? Pointless talk about a useless trip.

Surely he will think that I have gone too far, to agree with me would be to make too much concession. And damn expensive. I have had some savings made during my time in the military, including a salary from temporary summer jobs for the past few years. On top of that, I intended to sell my car, a dark cherry 1960 MG roadster with racing tires and twin cams (the same car Elvis drove in Blue Hawaii). In total, it was worth fifteen hundred dollars, and I was missing another thousand, as I told my father. He nodded, grunted, uttered a vague "Mmmm" and quickly shifted his eyes from the TV screen to me and back while I laid all this out to him.

Remember how we used to say, dad? How did I say I want to see the world?

Himalayas? Pyramids?

Dead Sea, dad? Dead Sea?

Well, so, haha, I'm also thinking of making a stop in Japan, dad. Remember my crazy idea? About Japanese sneakers? Yes? This could be a big deal, dad. Grandiose.

I thickened and over-salted, pushed as if I was selling goods, overdoing it, because I always hated huckstering and because the chances of pushing my “goods” were equal to zero. My father had just forked out hundreds of dollars to pay for my studies at the University of Oregon, and many thousands more for Stanford. He was the publisher of the Oregon Journal, a great job that paid for all the basic amenities of life, including our spacious white house on Claiborne Street, in Portland's quietest suburb, Eastmoreland. But my father was not rich.

Besides, it was 1962. The land was bigger then. Although people were already starting to orbit the planet in their capsules, 90 percent of Americans still had never flown in an airplane. The average American or American woman has never taken a risk in her life to be more than a hundred miles from my front door, so even the mere mention of an airplane trip around the world would upset any father, especially mine, whose predecessor as newspaper publisher had died in a plane crash.

Even brushing aside money, shrugging off security considerations, the whole idea still seemed so unviable. I knew that twenty-six companies out of twenty-seven failed, and my father knew it too, and the idea of ​​taking on such a colossal risk