Dear Hungry Reader,
On Saturday, I turned 34 years old.
On Sunday, I walked 35,271 steps.
No phone. No podcasts. No music. No one else. Just me, New York City, and 17.79 miles in five and a half hours.
Each one of the steps represented one of the estimated 34,000 men who commit suicide each year in the United States.
I came across Tim on LinkedIn a few months ago and have been inspired by his journey ever since, which he’s documenting each day online.
I have been looking forward to this walk since we assigned it to both The Arena and Dudes of Disruption Men’s Groups earlier this month. Both groups are coming together later this week—31 total men—for the first ever joint retreat between our communities.
We named the walk The Gauntlet—the perfect way to:
- Support Tim and mission.
- Share an intense physical challenge before coming together.
- Experience what it’s like to be alone for 34,000 steps and what comes up in our minds, hearts, and bodies.
What an experience it was.
I set out from my apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and walked a circuit around a large portion of the island. Down the Upper East Greenway to the East River Esplanade all the way to the southern tip of Manhattan before closing my loop by walking up the West Side and Riverside Park to 72nd Street and then across Central Park back home.
All I carried was a backpack of water, Gatorade, my Bricked iPhone, a few power bars, and my trusty Field Notes notebook and Studio Neat Mark Two pen.
At 4,642 steps into the walk, I started reflecting on my life. I passed a New Mexican flag at The Path of Liberty near the UN—its bright yellow field emblazoned with that familiar red Zia symbol. I stood looking up at it waving in the wind for a few moments thinking about how I grew up under a blue, vast, and wise New Mexican sky.
And for the next 29,000 steps, I reflected on my life. 1,000 steps for each year.
I whispered to myself about memories with my friend-since-six Duggan at La Mariposa Montessori as I passed barges on the East River and tourists lining up for ferries to the Statue of Liberty. I laughed and smiled to myself as I recounted mine and my friend Jackson’s Weekly Deli Habit at Kenyon while listening to gulls squawking in the air and friends chatting as they ran along the water. I thought about the good times, the hard times, and everything in between.
It was remarkable.
In fact, even after I got a blister on my left pinky toe 10,000 steps in and my legs started aching about 14,000 steps in, I barely noticed. My life filled me up. This remarkable blessing of a life.
It wasn’t until the last 4,000 steps—as I was coming out of Riverside Park and making my way back into Manhattan’s concrete grid—that I really started feeling the walk.
In the moments between reflecting, I started saying a mantra—something I’d started briefly when my legs first began aching down near Battery Park:
I am strong.
I am powerful.
I am determined.
Those words—that anchor—carried me through. Especially after I hit 34,000 steps and had no more years to reflect on.
I kept saying those three ways of being out loud as I finished my walk, sometimes interjecting with a choice expletive to really give it some oomph.
I could’ve kept going. Not because my legs felt good, but because I felt the power within me. My power. The power that’s always there.
And as I approached my home—a not-so-subtle physical representation of the future beyond 34—I reflected on the men who are struggling with mental health challenges right now. The men I know. The men I don’t. The times I’ve struggled with it.
34,000 steps is a lot of steps.
That’s a lot of men who take their own lives, and only a fraction of the men who are suffering—many of them silently.
A walk can’t take away suffering.
Even Tim’s walk across the United States.
But, maybe, taking away suffering isn’t the goal. After all, suffering is part of the human experience. That wrestling—with identity, purpose, value, and worth—is where great art is born. Where great breakthroughs and ideas begin. Where the human spirit expands into something new. Suffering can be a fuel. And a life free of suffering is a life free of the opportunities to grow.
But perhaps a walk can lift the veil on suffering. For silent, hidden suffering is no badge of honor, no pathway toward greater knowing.
I hope that Tim’s walk inspires more men—more people—to share about their challenges and cease suffering in silence.
As I’ve learned over nine years of working with men, people heal in community. The more we share. The more we listen. The more we challenge each other when the time is right. The more we can transmute suffering into fuel.
And as I reached my apartment building, I realized something else quite profound. Each of those 35,271 steps represented something in my life: a memory, a friendship, an accomplishment, a painful experience, something I overcame, something I celebrated. 34 years. 12,410 days. Something like 60 to 100 million steps.
To have had blisters and strained muscles at points along the way and still have made it.
Humans are resilient. It can be hard to see that in the midst of struggle, and yet no matter what is going on in your life, the years you’ve reached is a massive accomplishment and indication of your own resilience.
Your own strength.
Your own power.
Your own determination.
Will you walk too?
Warmly,
Coach Jake
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Previously Published on substack
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