{"id":37202,"date":"2021-02-12T02:00:40","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T07:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.desales.edu\/dsu-daily\/?p=37202"},"modified":"2021-02-11T16:16:38","modified_gmt":"2021-02-11T21:16:38","slug":"a-collective-marathon-dr-christos-karagiannopoulos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.desales.edu\/dsu-daily\/2021\/02\/12\/a-collective-marathon-dr-christos-karagiannopoulos\/","title":{"rendered":"A Collective Marathon\u2014Dr. Christos Karagiannopoulos"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dr

It is inconceivable to realize that we are approaching a one-year anniversary since the beginning of this global pandemic crisis, which has infiltrated into our society endless amounts of fear, anxiety, social distress, emotional fatigue, sickness, and overwhelming incidents of death rates across all social strata. COVID-19 has been an unthinkable global crisis of our century, which has derailed every aspect of our daily lives regardless of our gender, race, color, religion, political beliefs, and ethnicity. It has been a cosmic catastrophe, which has led to enormous levels of growing human poverty, social disparity, economic pain, and political arrest throughout our local societies and worldwide nations. Undeniably, it has been an overpowering curse to our modern civilization and an uncontainable threat to our human essence with not-known borders. It has been a very painful ailment with no sense of forgiveness or amnesty to our human existence and social survival.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Undeniably, it seems an endless process of impossibility within a tunnel with no lights. I can only portray COVID-19 as an infinite \u201c<\/span>Marathon\u201d<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0of social despair and misery, with no clear delineation of its path or visible signs of a finish line. Yet, through this painful Marathon-process, we have managed to stay vigilant, strong, dependable, confident, hopeful, and faithful to our God-driven principal beliefs of sacrifice, optimism, and self-survival. While we might have sensed our human vulnerability to mortality and physical insubstantiality, we have also found the courage to experience spiritual ease, unity, and hope through our faith in God. We have discovered pathways of enlightenment through believing in St. Francis de Sales’ assertions of “do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections,” and “have patience with all things, but, first of all, with yourself.” Through our emerged courage, optimism, faith, and sacrifices, we started the process of painting the unthinkable “finish line” of this painful and heartbreaking marathon-experience. Emerging COVID-19 treatment discoveries and the rapid development and implementation of a vaccination process are currently the most critical ingredients of hope for us to reach this finish line, a miraculous process of life-salvation and social redemption.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All the current humanitarian efforts and enormous scientific achievements are genuinely in line with our central Salesian principle of “be who you are and be that well.” They are a true reflection of St. Francis de Sales’ wisdom of “when you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.” They also represent real miracles of our infinite human capacities of intelligence and heroism. All these abilities can only blossom when we are united and function with gentleness, humility, gratitude, hospitality, and wisdom, the five most important core values that we all share, treasure, and respect in our work environment at DeSales University.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I want to present an important fact regarding the word\u00a0<\/span>“Marathon”<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0that I mentioned above. Clearly, to me, it is not only a sporting event. Marathon is a historical town about 42 kilometers North-East of the city of Athens in Greece. It is the town where I was baptized when I was six months old and gifted my Christian faith. It is also the site of the known battle of Marathon in 490 BCE, in which the heavily outnumbered Greek army defeated the Persians. Pheidippides, a Greek soldier who survived the battle, was sent running back to Athens to announce the Athenians’ victory. To commemorate this act, the distance between Marathon and Athens became a Marathon-running race during the ancient Olympic Games, and it was later conceived as an athletic event in modern times. In essence, a Marathon race exemplifies the courage, perseverance, sacrifice, diligence, and conviction we all need to display for overcoming this current COVID-19 crisis. As we all are undergoing our individual Marathon races of survival during this pandemic crisis every day, I am optimistic that we will soon become heralds of victory across all our respective social environments. Meanwhile, we need to unite and employ all our strong Christian core-values, recognizing with faith that this is the most critical Marathon race for our existence on the earth. With high respect for Aristotle’s claims that “the energy of our mind is the essence of our life,” I am fully convinced that we can all reach the finish line on this vital race of our lives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Christos Karagiannopoulos, MPT, PhD, ATC, CHT, is an assistant professor in the DeSales University Doctor of Physical Therapy Program.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is inconceivable to realize that we are approaching a one-year anniversary since the beginning of this global pandemic crisis, which has infiltrated into our society endless amounts of fear, anxiety, social distress, emotional fatigue, sickness, and overwhelming incidents of death rates across all social strata. COVID-19 has been an unthinkable global crisis of our century, which has derailed every<\/p>\n

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