Really Living Requires Really Risking

Lessons from Amazing Race

Yesterday while getting the wifi to work on my laptop, I switched on the TV. Up came “So You Think You Can Dance”. And while the program was finishing and with my stubborn laptop refusing to work, I resigned to the fact that the laptop it's not gonna work and I'll make do with whatever's on TV. I know I needed to sleep, but stucked on to the couch anyways. I’m sure you’ve had one of those days. So thankfully ( or not ) Amazing Race came on and I was relieved. I’ve never followed this season and have no idea which leg/what’s going on. The teams were heading to Germany and one scene of them were on the bus. The crewman was chatting with a married couple, which showed an ice pack on the husband’s knee. I assumed he was saying that he could still race competitively or something along those lines ( the volume was low ) and as the camera panned to another team ( the detectives ), they rolled their eyes and gave snide remarks. Save to say, they weren’t good friends. ( the detectives went on to say that they didn’t come on the show to make friends when they U-Turn-ed the couple ). I initially didn’t take an instant liking to the couple as I thought the husband looked pretty arrogant.

So the show went on and the detectives started as the 1^st team, and the couple 3^rd. A pretty comfortable 3^rd place I must say. I saw the husband going through the first few challenges limping, probably in pain. I remembered somewhere the wife said that they have an edge over the other teams because they have “unconditional love for each other” and “… such patience with one another”. ( Yeah right, we’ll see. that’s what they all say before one of them shouts at the other for taking the wrong exit )

The couple maintained their 3^rd position despite the husband’s injury and was well about to leave the 2^nd/3^rd challenge when they found out that they we’re U-Turn-ed by the detectives and had to do the other challenge before leaving to the next stop. Teams were given a choice of crawling under barbed wires to get a message from a soldier, amidst a war scene or to decode a morse code. Everybody chose crawling and when the couple were U-Turn-ed, they had to complete the morse code one as well. It was sad, seeing other teams that arrived at the stop after them, leaving before them when they completed the task while they were still stuck on the morse code. Their faces when they gave their supposedly decoded message to the marshall and have the marshall shaking his head, indicating that it’s the wrong message was one of helplessness. My heart sanked for them. They persisted and tried again. Time after time, they got back, re-listened to the morse code and went back to the marshall, only to be disappointed yet again. I can imagine how frustrated and disappointed they must’ve been. One by one, the teams left, even the last team who had to perform an extra challenge because they were the last one to check in the last leg. At that point, they looked at each other knowingly. Their race was over.

Throughout the whole drama, never once did they raise their voice towards the other. Never once did they shout or blamed the other party. Never once did they unload their frustration or anger towards the other. They encouraged, they never gave up. They were quite calm, although you could see through their expressions, all signs of hope diminishing as time went on. Oh, how I wished that there was a good ending to their circumstance. It must’ve been hard. After braving through the knee injury, they fell at the hands of the detectives.

I can still remember the husband hugging the wife when the last team left, both of them devastated, with tears. The wife apologizing as the husband consoles her that it wasn’t her fault. Her questioning the detectives for U-Turn-ing them. Them, hanging on to each other at a small corner, coming to terms that their dreams of winning were shattered. In the end, the host had to come find them and tell them that they were out of the race.

In her closing statement, with eyes all red and watery, she said “…. at the end of the day, it’s ok that we lost cos I know I still have [insert husband’s name] in my life”

So yes, this is the first time I’ve cried watching Amazing Race and me being so attached to an episode. My heart was heavy as I went to sleep yesterday night and now too, as I’m writing this.