You might be familiar with the saying, “familiarity breeds contempt.” It’s most often used to talk about relationships, and the way that spending a ton of time with someone can exacerbate their worst traits. I think it can apply to much more than just romance, though. Almost anything, when we’re overly used to it, can start to lose the curiosity and wonder it deserves. Things that are pretty incredible can quickly become boring or even annoying. In our modern lives, there are so many small things we take for granted without ever wondering where they might have come from, what problems they might have solved or if they have some hidden insane history.
Along those lines, here are five mundane things that have a much more badass backstory than you might assume.
Marathons
Marathons are a great place to start if we want to discuss contempt. I’ll be the first to say, I am pretty much absolutely never in the mood to discuss marathons, if the subject is one that someone is going to and/or has run. It’s impressive, sure, but it’s basically a very intense fitness test. If you were living an unhealthy lifestyle and decided to turn it around to run a marathon, I applaud you for your willpower and achievement. But if you buy one of those “26.2” bumper stickers, I’m rolling my eyes behind you in traffic 100 percent of the time.
That distance, and the word marathon, though, take us back to the origins of the feat — one that didn’t involve numbers, space blankets or even multiple participants. The modern, competitive marathon comes from a Greek legend of a messenger who carried information of extreme military urgency from Marathon to Athens, a distance of about 40 kilometers. He ran the entire distance to deliver the news of a Greek army victory over the Persians, and as the tale goes, then straight up DIED. I like to think if his spirit is watching marathons today, he is ALSO thinking, “Why are they doing this voluntarily?!”