What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional

Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that’s unfair, I think it’s possible to seek out a kind of fairness.

As I run I tell myself to think of a river. And clouds. But essentially I’m not thinking of a thing. All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.

I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.

We decided we’d go to bed soon after it got dark, and wake up with the sun. To our minds this was natural, the kind of life respectable people lived.

In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky. The sky both exists and doesn’t exist. It has substance and at the same time doesn’t. And we merely accept that vast expanse and drink it in.

Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

Before then I’d aimed at running a full marathon in three and a half hours, a pace of exactly one kilometer in five minutes, or one mile in eight.

I just run. I run in a void.