Running is as Complex as Each Human Being...
We ran fourteen miles this morning – in truth we ran thirteen, because we walked the last mile home…!
The humidity is mega high here, so sweating is non-stop really, whether running or sitting or sleeping! Unaccustomed folk like Anadi and I, are endlessly ‘de-frosting’ as Rodja and Cherisse describe it!
But it was a fabulous run… We had set off early and done laps along the beach and the scrubland before heading out to the hills and returning to our village again. Just a mile from the front door we stopped to drink the last drop from the camel bak and then I didn’t start again…!
So we walked home along the beach and watched our pack of Gros Islet dogs tell two unfamiliar Dobermans on leads with their owners to ‘go away’ with a lot of energy.
We talked today as we ran along, about making things fun, making life fun… ‘I find it more fun taking my running seriously’, I said, but like I remember Steve Davis (I think it was) saying… ‘Not being serious about being serious’ – and I find it a lot more fun running to levels I believe I am capable of than not!
To do this requires time and effort, and turning up on the running road each day…
Paradoxically it is running that offers me the most challenges; re-balancing bits and pieces of my body, putting in the training, always being consistent; but I know that from this place I have the fun of knowing I can run 20 miles, the fun of testing myself in a race – the excitement of ‘I wonder if I can…?’
As yet nothing else has challenged me this way, everything else has emerged from the wellspring of my own self inquiry through the running step…
Running has not been a top priority for me over the last couple of years, because Anadi and I have asked different things of ourselves to change our lifestyle in a massive way, in the way we have. I have missed running as much a lot, but it simply didn’t fit in to the same degree as it had – I ‘kept fit’ as I knew the time would come when I would create the space for what I feel I was born to do! And it has…
Running seems so simple – ‘Just do it...’ As Nike says…
But it is a complex as each human being is; the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other will access the unique aspects of each person and any unresolved tension and reveal themselves to themselves…
And in truth this is why I still run. My life’s journey is one of spiritual enquiry and growth, and it is in this simple act of running that I find I cannot hide from me!
We are on this planet for such a short time, and there have been created many beliefs about how we make the journey from birth to death…
We are not encouraged to ‘make it up as we go along’
We are not even that encouraged into self-reflection and self investigation when we are small… This may be changing now, of course, as more people learn to parent more consciously…
But there are often all sorts of stories that we are unconsciously colluding with about age and gender and education and what our piers are doing…
I have always challenged conventional wisdom, and I have always challenged my own beliefs too...
Where did I get that idea from? When did I first think that, do I believe that? who believes this? me or my Dad?
These voices from the past can hold us unconsciously as do the everyday voices in the media, the newspapers. All these things influence us subtly…
Listening to our heart, following what we truly know within us will reveal all the answers we ever need. It is in discovering our own inner voice and uncovering, discovering and knowing our own mind that we will find our truth…
And so run free…
