Last in the Race

Every year, at the school sports day, they ran the two-hundred-meter race, and every year Alice came in last.

It wasn’t that she didn’t try: she took off at full speed, arms and legs moving as fast as they could. But the other kids were simply faster than her, and halfway through the race she always found herself alone, with the group already far ahead.

“There’s no point running if I always lose anyway,” she told her best friend Marco one morning, tying her sneakers before the race.

“Then don’t run to win,” Marco replied, shrugging. “Run to finish. It’s different.”

Alice wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but that afternoon, when the starting shot fired, she decided to try anyway.

As always, the other kids immediately pulled ahead. As always, Alice found herself alone, last, out of breath, her legs burning. But this time, instead of slowing down to a stop, she kept running, one step after another, eyes fixed on the distant finish line.

When she finally crossed it, all the other runners had long since finished, and she braced herself for an awkward silence.

Instead, she heard a huge shout: Marco, who had already run and finished his own race, had stayed there waiting for her, and now he was jumping and cheering as if he had won himself.

“You finished!” he shouted, running up to her, out of breath. “You didn’t stop!”

“I was still last,” Alice said, a little breathless herself.

“Yeah,” Marco said, smiling, “but you made it. And that counts for a lot more than your place in the ranking.”

From that race on, Alice kept running, year after year. She never came in first. But she learned that the finish line that really mattered wasn’t beating everyone else: it was never stopping before the end.