101 ULTRAMARATHONS to Deliver THIS Message! ｜ Jonathan Kuplack
Episode Stats
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Summary
Jonathan has run 101 marathons in 101 days in 101 consecutive days without stopping. In this episode, Jonathan talks about how he did it, why he chose to do it, and how he plans to do more in the future.
Transcript
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They want to be challenged, but nobody challenges them, so they never taste it.
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Hello, my friends, and welcome to the John Henry Weston Show. It is a hot day here in Canada,
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so I'm sure it must be steaming wherever you are. We are here today to talk about a summer
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activity, I guess you could say, but that makes it all the harder. Imagine running a marathon.
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Imagine running a marathon every day. Imagine doing that for weeks and weeks on end. We're
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running, and he's running not only for himself to achieve the best he can be, but for the faith
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and to spread the way that running and endurance might help you form yourself as a man, but also
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form yourself in the faith. Jonathan, so good to be with you. Good to be here with you as well,
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John Henry. Thanks for having me. Let's begin as we always do with the sign of the cross.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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So, Jonathan, tell us about yourself. You're like a born runner. First of all, give me this. You did
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how many marathons in how many days straight? So I did 101 ultra marathons in 101 days.
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Consecutive with no stopping? No breaks. Every single day. I ran 35 miles a day for 101 days.
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And you're still alive. I'm hanging in there. I'm hanging in there.
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How recently did you complete that, and what did you just complete now?
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I finished the cross-country Via Magna run on the Feast of Divine Mercy, Divine Mercy Sunday. I think
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it was April 27th. And you're gearing up for something else. Yes, yes. We've got a big race on
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the docket. It's called the Mammoth 200 in Mammoth, California. It's a 206 mile race through
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the mountains around Mammoth. A lot of that sounds insane, especially for those of us who aren't
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runners. I did the three-day sharp pilgrimage, which is about 20, 22 miles a day. And I thought
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that was brutal. And we were just walking. We got up at five and usually bunked down at around 1030.
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And I thought that was brutal. And shoes didn't look good. And blisters on feet. But
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you were doing almost double that every day for 101 days. That's insane. Okay, tell us. How'd you
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get into that? You know, John Henry, ever since I was a kid, I always loved moving. And I never ran as
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a sport. I always ran as training for other sports, a lot of football, baseball. And as I got into high
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school, soccer and rugby became the main sports that kind of captured my imagination. So running was
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always training for that. But in the off seasons, I just loved it. I love running in the woods,
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trails. And I just, I got a lot of life from that. Into my adult years, I continued always,
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always running no matter where I was. I always kept running. And only within the last three years
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did I start racing competitively, almost on accident. So.
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But when you did start competing, you did well, sort of right off the bat.
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I did. I did. Now, just in case there's any ultra runners listening to this, the races
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that I entered, they weren't attracting a very deep field. But they were still my first couple
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races. And I did well. I surprised myself. I won. I came in first and second in every race
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I've run so far. Yeah. So, okay. So tell us about what you're doing and why you did this run.
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So a friend of mine and I, we started a nonprofit organization called Sebast, named after the 40
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martyrs of Sebast who, just to make the long and a beautiful long story short, they chose to freeze
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to death on a frozen lake rather than deny Christ. And I found their story so inspiring. That's what we
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named our organization that. And the purpose of our organization is to help young men enter into
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right relationship with Jesus Christ. And there's a lot that goes into that. And I'm not going to sit
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here and claim that I know everything about that, but we do know something and we shouldn't be afraid
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to give the two loaves and fish that we have. And we'll see what Jesus can do with that.
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So we decide to do the cross country run as an official launch project. We've been operating for
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five years now, but almost underground, not very public, just word of mouth. So this cross country
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run was to inspire people, but also an awareness campaign to say, guys, there's a place where you
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can go if you want to go deeper. And we're down here in New Mexico. So that's, that's why we did it.
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So there's a question right off the bat. A lot of people can't imagine doing what you're doing.
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And I'm sure you don't make all your, your, the, the, the young men who come and join your young
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boys, even who come and join you in your Sevast group, do what you're doing. But nonetheless,
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there's a lot of kids, boys who are, they don't feel themselves athletically gifted at all. Maybe not
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even academically gifted, but you know, they, there comes in all shapes and sizes. And what do you do
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for them? Do you ever have boys join your group who aren't gifted, uh, that way? Um, and yet they'll
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try. What do you do for that? Absolutely. John Henry. I mean, right now, as we're having this
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conversation, we have 15 college men here for 10 weeks for a 10 week program. And there's a handful
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of the guys in there that it seems like there's not an athletic bone in their body. And, uh, but
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it's helping them see that you're a human being, you're a body and a soul. You're a body, soul
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composite. And as a human being, you're a mover. We're made to move. We're made to use this,
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this body that we don't just inhabit the body. We, we are in a sense, the, the body and the soul,
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we are that. It's not just, I'm a soul in a body and we have a responsibility to take care of this.
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I always ask the guys, you know, if you had a million dollar racehorse, would you take that
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through McDonald's? But you have a temple to Holy Spirit here and you're, you're hitting that all
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the time. Like guys, we need to respect and honor and nurture and cultivate this. So we have the
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energy and the strength to serve the people around us and to live a flourishing human life. So helping
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them see that and then desire that is, it is difficult, but we, we do our best. That you hit on a
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key thing, desire that. So it's really easy to desire the comfortable life, but also just the
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ease, the comfort, the good life, if you will, that's so-called. How do you get them to move beyond
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that into embracing and even desiring something more, especially a life of sacrifice?
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No, I love that question. I love, we could talk about that forever. Uh, you know, getting guys to
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want, want the strenuous life. Like as men, we're made for the strenuous life. We are, we're made to
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provide, to protect, we're made to serve. We're made to spend our strength in the service of a
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worthy cause, in the service of others. And that's when we've come most fully alive. And it's so
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beautiful. And most young men, they've never tasted that. So it's how do we get you, get them to taste
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these things that might seem a little intimidating and not desirable. What's desirable for most young
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men is their parents' couch and an Xbox and a giant Coke and some potato chips. That's what most
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of them desire, but they don't actually desire that. That's just been this, this artificial desire
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that's been cultivated by our culture. But when they actually taste the joy of the struggle,
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the joy of the battle, and we start living in imitation of Jesus Christ and the way that he
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came to this earth to love and to serve and to show us that way, they come alive. They want to be
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challenged, but nobody challenges them. So they never taste it. Okay. So now you've got the attention
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of a ton of parents who have a, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 year old, who is what you described
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the couch potato with the bag of chips and the Coke, uh, on the Xbox or whatever other system that they
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might have, or just the TV remote. And they're all hungry saying, all right, what do we do?
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Yes. You know, John Henry, I don't myself, I just got married six months ago and I don't have any
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children of my own yet. So I've never raised young children. I am the second oldest of 13.
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So I've been around a lot of children and I've taught at a boys boarding school for years.
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So I'm, I'm very familiar with the age, age group between 14 and 18. So I've raised a lot of kids
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in that age group. And what I would say is, I mean, they have to be inspired. I mean, desire is the key.
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You said it without, without the desire, they will not go. You can make all the rational arguments in
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the world. Why it's not good to play video games, why it's isn't good for you, why you're actually
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hurting yourself and hurting your future family and your future spouse and your future community
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and, and the present right now. It doesn't matter. They're, they've been too seduced by the comfort
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and the solution, the life that the culture proposes. They need to be inspired. They need to
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meet someone who sets their heart on fire, who can show them something beautiful that captivates
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their imagination that then initiates that desire. It's got to, you got to capture the imagination of them.
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I don't know how to put that in a neat, in a neat package and mail it to someone.
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What did it for you? You, uh, being the, the, you know, in, in a huge family and, uh, something
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John Henry, I was so blessed. I went to an all boys Catholic boarding school. It was called
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St. Gregory's Academy in Northeastern Pennsylvania. And that school changed my entire life. My whole
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worldview flipped on its head. All of a sudden it, it woke up desire in me. It woke up my imagination
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and it was the only way I can describe my four years. There was a beautiful, magical, transformative
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experience where I actually, for the first time in my life, I had teachers that truly inspired me.
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I saw these men that I wanted to be like these men. There was something about them. It was so beautiful.
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They were so, there was an intensity. There was a love. There was a joy. There was a playfulness,
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but there was also this deep love for our Lord, for our lady, and for the Catholic faith that I had
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never seen in any of my teachers before. The faith was always just a dead subject on a page. It wasn't
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the living, breathing God in us. And I, I, it just, it changed everything for me. Yeah. It was beautiful.
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Tell us about the benefits you might say of, of kind of pushing your endurance. What are the
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spiritual benefits? What are the benefits for you generally as a man? You know, this is kind of a
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cliche throwaway line, but I do believe it. There is this thing to testing the limits of, of your own
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heart and going to a place you didn't think you could go to. I tell the kids a lot. There's,
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you always have more in the tank. When you think your tank is empty, you've barely, you have not
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begun, not yet begun to tap the depths. The human soul has such great depths and there's such a
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magnanimity within us that only difficulties and hardships and struggle can draw, draw out.
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But I think my favorite thing about ultra running for me is, is courage, uh, and humility.
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People might look at these races and they might say, well, you do these really difficult things and
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that can make you really proud or the self-sufficient. But really what you do is you're just running up
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against your own weakness. You are confronting your own weakness and you are hitting a wall and
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you're like, Lord, so many times in a race, my prayer is, Jesus, I can't do this. I need you to
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carry me here. I need you. Especially as men, it's so easy for us. I'm assuming we're all in the same
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boat. I think I'm a pretty good example of a standard human dysfunctional male, but it's so
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hard for us to trust the Lord because we like to rely on ourselves. I'll do it. I'll fix it. My
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projects, my plans, like, no, we need to invite Jesus into those places because we cannot truly,
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we're too weak. We cannot do it. So these ultra endurance tests, they bring us up against our
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weakness and it humbles you. It shows you the truth about yourself. It's a mirror of truth about
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this is where I really am. This is how much I need a savior and I need the Lord. And it's beautiful
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and it fills you with an immense joy. And then the courage aspect, it takes courage to push yourself
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through pain. And, uh, St. Paul is the master of that. So I, yeah, those two things, courage and
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humility. Pope Pius XI said men must look for the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ. And he
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urged that the faithful give public honor to Christ the King so that individuals and states would submit
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once more to the rule of their savior. And that is why LifeSite News is raising up the image of Christ
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the King across the United States. And you can help us reach millions more. Please pledge your support
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today for these billboards at lifefunder.com slash Christ is King. What would you say are the hardest
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challenges for young men today, boys and young men? I think it's having a real relationship with the
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Lord. And because I think there, there is, they're saturated with so many distractions. The devil
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obviously is, is a master at this. He's been, he's been at this game for a long time and he's upgraded
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his arsenal for the age. You know, maybe back in the day, he might've tempted people to excessive
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glory or honor. No one's being tempted to do some great deeds in their own honor. They're being
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tempted to just absolute degeneracy and sloth and pornography. And the smartphone is his biggest
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weapon. And so many kids, they're growing up with this thing in their hand. I didn't see a cell phone
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until I was 17. So praise the Lord. I just missed that era as a child. I never, it was never part
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of my life. We had to play. We had to imagine we moved. I think the phone and the video games and
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the television are the biggest obstacles for young men today to realizing the greatness for which they
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were made and to having a real relationship with the Lord, because the zone is flooded with noise
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and distraction. This is going to come as an odd question for you in a way, because I know you're
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working in the other sphere, but what about women? What's your advice for women? If you have some,
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because you're newly married, so I'd love to hear your take there.
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Oh my goodness, John Henry, you're really, really putting me in the hot seat now.
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Women, you know, John Henry, I have to just come clean here and tell you, I do not feel qualified
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to speak about this. But what I can say is from my extremely limited experience,
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just six months married, but just growing up and obviously having some sisters and
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you see women in the world and you interact, we are different. We have different souls.
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And there's a, again, cliche line, there's a beautiful complementarity there. And I've just
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realized in the past six months with my wife, the first three months were extremely difficult
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in a sense where I just felt something grating against me that was challenging me in a way that
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I'd never been challenged before. But then once I came to realize that a truer self was on the other
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side of this, I started to embrace that. And now it doesn't grate on me at all. And I'm, I just,
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I'm so appreciative of the different perspective that she brings that challenges me to grow in ways that
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I'm not familiar with. So that's the best I have for that.
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Well, no, that's very interesting because that, that brings up this.
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So here you're like, you're like man of steel, you're doing all this running, yet you found a
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Boy. So tell us about that. What, what, what challenges the ones you can share, uh, did you
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face? I mean, and, and what did you find hard? Uh, because that sounds crazy from this side of the,
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from this side of things, looking at you, you're running these ultra marathons. And yet you say
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it's hard to, to, um, to learn how to be a husband properly.
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I'm only six months in. And if you asked me this in 10, 20 years, you get a different answer. But
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from my limited six months, it's, I'm being called to love in a way that I've never been called to
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love before. Loving the men that we work with is different than loving your wife and someone you live
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with. There's this constant, you can never, there isn't an escape. There's never a break. Like I'm
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here for an hour and now I'm going to leave. I'll see you tomorrow. It's the constant demand, but not
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demand in a bad way, in a way that draws, constantly draws you out of yourself and says, I'm going to
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pour life into this other person. And I'm going to be attentive to this and to their needs and their
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hopes and their dreams. For me, it helps get me out of my own head and get me out of my own
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selfishness. Cause I think at the root of everything, we're, we're all pretty selfish
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and self-centered and I know I am. And I'm also very impatient. So not having things at my game speed,
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which I like to move quick. That's also a beautiful challenge for me. And I felt so liberated in the past
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six months. Like I'm being freed from something that I've been enslaved to. Yeah, that's, that's what I've
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got so far. I know a lot of the young men will be interested in this. How do you find a wife?
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Because how do you find a girlfriend? I mean, I mean, like, I, and I don't mean a girlfriend to,
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to, to, to just go out. I mean, to a court, someone to court because that's a lot on both,
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both sides of the, of the spectrum, men and women. It's really tough because where do you go? Once you
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get out in the work world, if you don't find a spouse in the Catholic college, God willing, you were
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able to attend, uh, it's sort of, you feel lost, uh, because where do you go? Do you go to a bar?
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I mean, what is there? And, and a lot of people, um, I know in the United States, the United States
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where you are, is particularly blessed in that there are these, uh, huge communities often of
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traditional Latin mass of, of very reverent parishes in a lot of places in the world that
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doesn't exist. So what would you suggest in, in terms of finding a spouse or finding someone to,
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to even look toward a marriage with? Yeah. You know, it's, it's funny, John Henry, how
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with the advent of all these new technologies, like especially the smartphones and all these
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different things, people don't tend to socialize in the same types of ways. I'm sure you've observed
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throughout your life. Uh, there aren't as many live gatherings where we used to get together all
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the time. There's always things happening where there were these opportunities for, for interaction.
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The way I met my wife was at a coffee shop. My, my little brother married her niece. So I was talking
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to my little brother and she walked in, sat down at our table. He left to take a call for work and we
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ended up talking for an hour. And then I, we went on a hike the next day. She was a collegiate soccer
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player. I also played soccer in college. So we went and play, we went, we went and played one-on-one
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two days later. And, uh, and then, um, she's also a professional musician. She's a professional
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cellist. And so we went out to a music, uh, a music outing. And, but the thing that really,
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what I would say to young guys is you have to find a woman who's in love with the Lord.
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And my wife is the most attractive thing about her was her absolute obsession with becoming
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a great saint and how in love she was with our lady in the rosary. And the only thing she
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cares about is getting to heaven. And I'm like, I can get behind that. So that, that's what
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I would say. Find someone who's completely in love with God.
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Wow. Jonathan, for such a young man, you are a wealth of information and experience. Believe it
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or not, I think, uh, very many people will be blessed by your words. Tell us, uh, where people
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can, uh, keep in touch with you and, uh, what you do. Absolutely. If, um, they could go to
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sebast.org. That's our website and you can find our contact information. Spell that out for us.
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S-E-B-A-S-T-E dot O-R-G. Sebast.org. You can see what we're doing on the website. You can get in
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touch with us through there. And right now the main project of Sebast is this college men's
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summer formation program. And right now I'm looking to launch a professional ultra running career,
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but I don't want to pick up any corporate sponsors. We'd like to be sponsored from just the Catholic
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world. So I can continue to go out and to speak at schools and colleges and parishes around the
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country without having any strings attached. So that's what we're doing right now.
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Awesome. Jonathan Kuplak. Thank you so much for joining us. God bless you. And, um,
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may our Lord continue to, uh, have you running for his team. It's, uh, it's an amazing work you're
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doing. Thank you, John Henry. I appreciate it. And God bless all of you. And we'll see you next time.
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The Lord be with you. I'm Deacon Keith Fournier, and I hope you enjoyed this video from LifeSite
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