Roger Bannister
In last week’s column I wrote about Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile in May 1954. For years, that barrier had been regarded as insurmountable due to the belief that the human body would never endure the required physiological exertion. Sir Roger Bannister believed the barrier was a mental one rather than physical and his achievement paved the way for hundreds of others to emulate his success.
I learned that the shoes Roger Bannister wore 69 years ago in his record-breaking run sold for six figures at a 2015 Christie’s auction. After only two-and-half minutes of bidding, the shoes went under the hammer to an anonymous telephone buyer for £266,500 – well over $500,000.
That totally blitzed auctioneers’ expectations of realising £30,000-£50,000.
I fully expected Sir Roger’s shoes would be the most expensive shoes ever sold. So wrong! A quick search revealed, to my surprise, that the sneakers Michael Jordan wore in the 1998 NBA Finals sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $2.2 million. An astronomical figure to my mind but wait – there’s more. Again, my expectations proved way too low, imagining that no one could pay more than that, for a pair of shoes.
I found footwear called ‘Moon Star Shoes’, priced at $19.9 million – followed closely by ‘Passion Diamond stilettos’ priced at a very reasonable $17 million… plus others going for a modest $15 million.
My search stopped at that point. I had never have imagined people paying prices like that for shoes. Simple presumption plus lack of knowledge on my part… even auction ‘expert’s’ expectations were incredibly surpassed on the likely sale price for Roger Bannister’s shoes.
Murray Smith
‘Experts’ also said the sub four-minute mile was impossible. It highlights how little we know – and how much there is to know. The brilliant scientist, Albert Einstein once said, “we know one millionth of a percent about anything…” That was very humble of him, I think. Many lay claim to knowing lots more than that.
For example, the confident assertion of someone professing to be an ‘atheist’, stating there is no God really surprises me! That’s because this position pre-supposes you would possess complete knowledge of everything that there is to be known. For example, you would have to know the complexities of the known universe and how many billions of stars are out there.
It’s been estimated that there are about the same number of stars in the observable universe as there are sand grains in all of Earth’s beaches. Do you know how many starfish get washed up daily on those beaches? How many yaks live in the expanses of the Himalayas? Or how many fleas lived on Napoleon’s cat? Ridiculous you say? I’m just suggesting a little humility might open us up to amazing discoveries.
Like me with shoe prices – when it comes to God, low expectations exist on the basis of what we don’t know about Him. Perhaps He is infinitely greater, all knowing, powerfully and more lovingly concerned with His creation than you’d ever imagined?
A deepening relationship with Him spanning years, unequivocally confirms this for me.
