race day affirmation

Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man [devotes] himself to his life with reverence in order to give it true value. ... At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give to every will to live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. - Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought
Today was race day! I met some really wonderful people. But let's get into the 'race': When I finally found the 4:00 pacer, which was my goal marathon pace based on my training, I discovered 10k later, so at 30k, that today was not my day. I finished 10 minutes off - but before I knew that, as I approached the final uphill, I had a completely unexpected sensation of being exactly where I was meant to be today.
Up until that point, I had made a firm commitment to just keep 'running', which felt more like a generous walk, so I was not anticipating a positive outcome, though I definitely put through the motions what I've learned from David Roche's articles and Kaci Lickteig's practice: I thanked and praised all of the spectators offering encouragment, high-fived children - even acting like a child myself at some points, wanting not just to pass by, but to interact in any way, which, for lack of better idea, meant I yelled out: whooop! And made Italian-inspired gesticulations.
So when I reached the final section, I was surprised to feel a rush of gratitude at just being there, making that effort as an average Joe (I came in the top third of women, the middle of men's times), as if my body was trying to teach me something like a Hallmark card might say: when we don't give up, there is a kind of levelling where we do all get snowflake-awards. (I will probably lose all five of my regular readers, who I am so grateful for, when I admit, I am not a fan of "everyone wins" - but, that said, as a teacher, I love rewarding effort, so, I guess my life philosophy was meeting me in the final miles of the marathon.)


I've been lecturing a lot about ethics recently, which is probably why Schweitzer, who wrote the quote at the top of this post, was on my mind, even though ethics is not on the syllabus. He came up with the concept of "reverence for life" as a remedy to the impulse to criticize and a bid to explain the ideal of an ethical society in the modern age. In my own teaching, I've also concluded that it makes little sense to explain the purpose of critical approaches without considering ethics. How can what we do be devoid of ethics, and civic resposibility, if we are striving to live a life worth remembering?
What I like about Schweitzer is that the path he draws to ethics begins with reverence for life. His teaching begins with thanks, which on so many levels is a solution for those of us with Tolstoyan questions, wondering at a Rousseauian 'blank slate'/noble savage approach to education. Rather than get into all that, let's go straight to the solution: isn't the ideal education one where learning is voluntary, one where we, students, are moved out of a deep sense of gratitude and awe to try to grow? To bring this back to running, I am so grateful for today's experience, because it was an experience of gratitude - if not at all what I was expecting, or how I expected things to go.
Speaking of Tolstoy, couldn't what he wrote of the school he founded also be said of running: "Like every living body the school not only changes every year, day, and hour, but also has been subjected to temporary crises..."
Life: what a journey! Wow! *cough, or did I mean, whooop? (Your writer cringes. Laughing. And affirming life.)
Postscript day-after addendum: I am realizing it is relevant to add that in my happy state after the marathon, I congratulated others who were in the "finish zone" at around my time, and all of them, except for one, almost barked that their time was not what it could have been because of: the weird weather (it was), injury, sporadic training. I could have spoken like they did at that point, but far before then, I had come to terms with my day, and ended up having an experience that exceeded my expectations. Also, today, I am almost as good as new - which could be a sign I didn't push myself, or could be a sign that I'm in this for the long (ultra?) run.

Brush: misprinted type.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

pursues you in your flight

Image
This will be a brief post because during this unusual window of recreational off-time, I have decided to keep up with the WS100 updates. Like, I feel life is like a race now, so it's therapeutic to watch a race, just like once upon a time, in the midst of giving too many exams, I felt cured by watching "judge shows", specifically "Chopped", which depersonalised my understanding that assessment can verge on the arbitrary. But let's talk about races. Specifically, the feeling of where the good old college try in the race is foiled by sudden changes to the course, different from what was trained for. This is all figurative - but two running-based passages got me back on track in my losing 'race', which is why I thought I would write about it on this blog. First, were parts of AJW's WSJ100 speech , which inspired my will to continue with relentless forward motion. He says things like: "I want you to go into the race confident, resilient, and f
Keep reading

The Squite Workout

Image
The idea of speeding up is less appealing to me than stretching runs into the far distance. Sometimes I look at the gathering of trees in the hills that I run to and recognize where I'd once stored thoughts of what had been ailing me and am reminded of how enormous nature is, capable of absorbing so much thought and still go far beyond it, when those same thoughts, when trapped inside my mind, become unwieldy. Once in the forest, they blend in and gradually disappear: replaced with an almost inert snail on the path, syrupy summer air, the call of fighting jays. They beckon the mind out of itself and into the intricacies of creatures, plants, wind, weather. A unity is achieved, a balance restored. I occasionally speed up when I feel like it though, like to chase or pass the occasional other runner I encounter. But this month, I got a new training partner. It was after the rain. I was slogging up the steep, barely-a-trail that cuts straight up through the more tangled trees to the
Keep reading

vampire moths!

Image
I am still trying to shake off that unwanted running buddy of midsection kilograms - and marvel at how I have less of an issue showing off my running-induced blue toes in sandals than coping with the war trophy of the end-of-term stomach (induced by sleepless nights writing, marking, or invigilating). The blog post I had been composing was supposed to be about the pleasure of running far enough to see swans puff themselves out like cumuli on hot days, or the pheasant I found that lives in a park; the indescribable pleasure of feeling the weather and its hourly changes as opposed to intellectually understanding what it says in an app. But what finally prompted me to open this Compose page were the two vampire moth bites I sustained - which frightened me so much, that I now prefer to do regular 17 mile runs on a totally different route in order to avoid the chance of seeing these insects again, for a time. One day, I was running along, minding my own business, when I felt something on
Keep reading