July Hibernation

[El Gordo]

I've read it again, twice, and I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't need a response. Sometimes I feel almost obliged to acknowledge really good contributions. Something to do with my semi-proprietorial staus, and also, possibly, in my less secure moments, a fear that people may go away if they think they're unappreciated. But these seem to be pretty shallow instincts at the moment.

And MLCM himself explains why no response is required. The self-regulating tension between talking and listening.

That said, it stimulated a few thoughts, as I'm sure it will have with everyone else. One thing it did touch on that always interests me is the dynamic between running and writing. I've long realised that for me, running is the fuel that drives something else. Without the fuel, I'm stuck. This isn't to say that running has no other purpose. Of course it does. Coming home from a decent run, sweating and exhausted, having a shower and pulling on fresh clothes, is itself a life-affirming and enriching sensation. But the true benefit is the way that that feeling can be recycled and fed into other creative activities. It's primarily a means to an end, even though it has many good intrinsic qualities too. It's why I find non-running periods paralysing, and so serious.

As for the god stuff, it's done the opposite for me. I agree that running can be a spiritual experience, but as we all know, spiritual isn't the same as religious. I've never been more comfortable with my atheism, and more certain about it, than I am these days. For me at least, running has clarified all those things. I'm much more interested now in how bright, rational people can hold fantastic (in the true sense of the word) beliefs about heaven and hell and miracles and stuff. I'm fascinated by the idea that some intellectual boxing match is going on inside them all the time. But perhaps it isn't.

Perhaps it's the spiritual strokes I get from running that has helped to boot any lingering religious doubts out the back door. I don't want that to be interpreted as arrogance though, please. I've stopped (I think) being rude about most religious people. I can't help being certain that there's no god in the traditional sense. Perhaps I don't think about it enough to have doubts.

But anyway, MLCM -- I'm sorry to see that you're in some pain at the moment. It happens to all of us, if that's any consolation. It is to me. It's part of the fascination of running that it spins us around, like we're planets in a solar system, sometimes close to the sun, warm and bright, and sometimes a long way from everything. And not just circling the sun but spinning around on our own intellectual axes at the same time. No two days, no two moments, ever quite the same.

If my vast age has taught me nothing else, it is that life is cyclical. It's wheels within wheels. (Or "weals within weals" as I recall an adolescent poem of mine saying.) Your orbit has moved you away for a while, but that very same orbit is bringing you back.

Why not read some George Sheehan?

http://www.georgesheehan.com/essays/

I should do what I promised myself a couple of months back -- to read a bit of Sheehan every day.

Hmmm. A bit like believers reading a bit of the Bible every day?

As Hal Higdon would say: Yikes.