The Impossible Dream

Day 39 / 366

Casey Niestat is one of the only people in this world that I idealize. Though he is most famous for being an amazing filmmaker, what I like about him is how he is always working hard and challenging himself.

He had a successful career in advertising and even made and sold a show to HBO even before he started YouTube. And when he did YouTube, he changed vlogging forever. He made 800+ daily blogs in a row every one of which was shot and edited like a mini-movie. With no prior tech knowledge, he started a tech company and sold it to CNN which made him a millionaire.

Today, Casey uploaded a video that has quickly become my favorite. In it, he talks about another one of his impossible challenges, one that lasted over 17 years.

At age 26, Casey got into a horrible accident that caused multiple fractures in his leg. The doctor told him that while he would be able to recover and walk, he would never be able to run again. Casey decided then and there that he was going to prove everyone wrong by running a marathon in under 3 hours.

The global average time that people take to finish a marathon is 4 hours and 29 minutes. So doing it in under 3 hours is crazy. Mind you, Casey had never run a marathon before this. But he had this impossible dream, and he was going to achieve it no matter what.

I would encourage everyone to watch the whole video, in which Casey takes us through the journey of the next 17 years, of failure after failure, as he tried to achieve this dream. Here’s a quote from the video that hit me really hard

Yes, it’s hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. You are not out here because it’s easy.
You do a lot of meaningless, purposeless things.
You get obsessed. You spend years focussed on them.
And literally, no one cares but you. But you persevere anyways.
You keep running. You don’t quit. You die trying.