'Relationship On The Run
It is 2.35pm and I am about to write my blog early in the day....
Since we have been here in Corfu, I have taken to running the same eight miles each morning... Apart from Sunday when we went a further five miles...
I like the eight mile route... A winding road, quiet - except for the occasional energetic greeting by a dog on a chain or behind a fence - sunny, cats wandering, olive trees lining the way....
Yesterday I ran alone...
I love to run alone. It is important for my soul. It sings a different song when I am on the running path by myself..
Running with a true friend - a soul mate - is also a beautiful experience, but it is a very different one...
In the same way I love being alone in a coffee shop, reflecting, creating, being....
And I also love meeting a friend for cafe Philosophique... And to share delicious food.
These two experiences are very very different, in truth totally different.
The very essence is different.
Even though running happens and coffee drinking happens in both episodes, those factors are more the context....
The experience happens from the context we set, the occassion, the 'thing we are doing'....
Being human means that in essence we all experience similar things... Eating, sleeping and then all manner of activities in between... Many activities we might all have done; but this doesnt mean the exeperience will be the same...
Even savouring the same delicious meal will be different for each person; as will running the same race, seeing the same film or play... Which is why listening and truly seeking to cross the bridge into the world of another opens us to much deeper connection...
Some activities only a few of us experience .
Watching the red arrows for instance fills me with utter delight, and fascination too, both in imagining what it might be like to be inside the plane, as well as inside the soul of the person actually flying the plane....
I am essentially a lone runner, or a 'one on one' runner...
I think running alone is good for me at the deepest level as something 'happens' within me, that doesn't happen anywhere else...
I wrangled at one time, with the thought that maybe this meant I 'should' always run alone!
I have done many, many miles solo before... At times covering ninety miles in a week, every mile a solitary one....
But then I recognised that running with another person offers me a completely different richness, a space to enjoy 'relationship on the run'; a place to grow, and to make full use of the space that exists between and all around us in expansive ways...
No limits to where the conversation might go, vast vistas of possibility opening up as the miles roll by... Side by side, the dialogue twisting and weaving and creating something new...
I am privilaged to have enjoyed some very special 'relationships on the run', stretching right back to forty years ago...
Today Anadi ran this route with me and I reflected how different it felt... And how much I value both experiences...
With Anadi it is an opportunity to just talk, and explore... Or to be silent and run along together...
As always the hands free, 'nothing to do but run' feels very important whether alone or with another.........
I was meant to be racing a race this weekend, twenty miles around a lake in Ioannina, but because of the elections in Greece it has been moved to a date when I will be miles from here... And now I cannot remember when my next race is...
Or where!
And yet I am always 'in training' for something, and aware that preparing for a race is simple really; any race...
Go running!
Go running every day.... Except on rest days...
Then turn up at the race and run...
Most things are more simple than we make them...
I made running - the most natural action - very complex at times in my life.
But then it was reflecting complexity within me....!
And then when we are here in Corfu, after running we swim to our breakfast....
Denise brought me yoghurt with banana and walnuts goji berries and honey...
'Walnuts for your brain and yoghurt for your muscles' she said as she put the bowl down in front of me...
