Solitary acts

Not to gush over the NYTimes, but some of their blogs are hidden gems. Actually, most big newspapers like the LATimes have excellent blogs. I reread the entry on marathons from the Well blog on the NYTimes and was reminded of another entry I read from the blog, appropriately titled, Happy Days (its tagline is “The pursuit of what matters in troubled times,” haha) about happiness.

How does one describe the experience of reverie: one is awake, but half asleep, thinking, but not in an instrumental, calculative or ordered way, simply letting the thoughts happen, as they will. … If it consists in anything, then I think that happiness is this feeling of existence, this sentiment of momentary self-sufficiency that is bound up with the experience of time. … Time is nothing, or rather time is nothing but the experience of the present through which one passes without hurry, but without regret. … And then it is over. Time passes, the reverie ends and the feeling for existence fades. The cell phone rings, the e-mail beeps and one is sucked back into the world’s relentless hum and our accompanying anxiety.

Liz Robbins wrote about running as a process of introspection, giving us all a purpose and destination. While Simon Critchley wrote about happiness derived from happiness within. It’s not hard to discern the connection between the act of running and that deep happiness within.

While I’m still riding my marathon high, here is another article about an editor at the NYTimes who will be hopefully be running the New York Marathon to reclaim her body from cancer. So inspiring. As Liz Robbins wrote, “Every runner has a story. All you have to do is ask. When you do, it’s as if you unlock a journal kept in the brain from all those solitary hours spent training. It’s good to talk to someone other than yourself or your running partners once in a while.”

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One reason people run – and read running books – is that casual running often confers status. Jogging is considered an outward marker of achievement. It helps draw the American class divide between the thin and the fat. For example, a daily group jog in Central Park, starting at 5.30am, features “many of New York’s top executives, lawyers and traders”. One author, Liz Robbins, calls it a “power breakfast”. [Source]

LOL. Maybe we all run for the same reason we buy luxury cars and get college degrees – social status. To increase your status is to increase your likelihood of mating and reproducing. Gee, and to think I thought we were complex creatures.