My friend was predicting her oldest boy will excel at cross country when he tries out for the team at school this fall because he's good at math. I didn't have time to unscramble the logic before her husband practically shouted, "I hate running! We English majors [sweeping arm motion to include me in this] can't focus long enough to be any good at it."
It's true I have some rather flaky tendencies and my monkey mind is legendary for its skittishness. It's also true that until recently, I hated running too. Oh sure, I was built like a runner in my skinny days, only I smoked too many cigarettes for this to be a viable hobby. Even after I dropped the smokes and a host of other bad habits (a shitty marriage, self-loathing, and other tyrannies), and even after Black Hockey Jesus wrote this inspirational post about personal revolution and finding dignity under your extra layer of fat, I couldn't bring myself to do it.
Until I did.
So now I am out there in Central Park trying to remember form and "progress not perfection." In the meantime, that's a lot of time spent in my tiny little mind, not always a safe place to be. Yesterday it occurred to me that that could be the root of my long-standing avoidance: time alone means getting awfully comfortable and intimate with those awfully uncomfortable feelings and truths about oneself. It's part of what makes meditation so hard.
But something grand has happened: this new motion has become a sweet moving meditation for me. I realized it yesterday (wouldn't Alpana be proud of me?!). The song "Two of Us" sung by Aimee Mann and Michael Penn came on the iPod as I plodded along, out of the shade and into some sunshine, which cast my shadow to my left. There we were: me and my shadow, feeling all right, and moving to a new beat of self-contentment.
I'm hoping you feel the same today....
(Sidebar: not sure what's up with the duck-themed home video; good old YouTube.)
I love this and I love that you're enjoying running, Catherine! :) I so want to come down to NYC and run with you in Central Park (that is, once my stress fracture that I got from running too often heals up, ha!)
ReplyDelete@AnnCarey - oh dear! Please heal quickly. But I thought you were a swimmer, my little Pisces?
ReplyDeleteI've never enjoyed running -- it hurt my knees, my ankles wanted to buckle, my heart pounded, pure awfulness.
ReplyDeleteMy trainer insisted I get off the comfy old eliptical machine and run on a treadmill as warm up and I hated it. See reasons above.
But he pushed me and I grudgingly did it, and I'm not saying I love running, but I began to understand how people could do it. Mainly for the meditative reasons you say.
I knew something odd was happening when I stayed on the treadmill a minute longer than he'd told me to run. Maybe there's still hope?