I have a delightful companion that awaits me on the opposite side of my front door. I’ve known him for some years now; his availability remains consistent where mine often falls. He is a better measure of a friend than I, though he seems to hold no grudges.
Many days I open the door and neglect to acknowledge his invite – instead of joining him, I step over him. I walk on.
But other days I anticipate our reunion. I know he will be waiting, and I know he will understand whatever I have to bring to him.
His dress varies greatly, but he is unchanged.
In days past he has worn layers of dust-emitting gravel, providing soft landing for my legs to trot upon. On separate occasions he has come clothed in ebony asphalt with dashed yellow lines fracturing him down the center. Other times he has been nothing more than an open field of prairie grass and an invite to tread faster.
Today he was draped with a thousand fallen leaves where Vancouver’s streets were patched with the palette of the season and half submerged in sweet rains.
An afternoon spent under fluorescent lights in a plastic pen had already decided for me - I knew when I stepped inside the front door today that I would just as soon return to the other side.
I had to meet my dear friend. I wanted nothing more than to kick my feet through leaves and wet streets.
I had to run.
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My affections for this thing called running however, did not sprout in soils of ‘like’.
For the greater part of my years I have hated the act. I remember junior high cross-country races through gopher-ridden trails. I remember well the pasture that stretched itself out beside our little school and its beaten path that would always beat me. I remember the three hills nearing the end of the route (which if I returned to today would barely be called hills, but my memory paints them tall and insurmountably steep). I remember the defeat those inclines waved in front of me before I ever reached their toes. I remember the shame that came with finishing somewhere near the end of the pack. I remember the burn in the back of my throat and the subsequent taste of blood that would insist upon staying for hours, or so it seemed – it was an enduring reminder whispering in my ears, “You’ll never be one of them. You’ll never finish first”.
I hated running. Not with a mild distaste, but with a whole-hearted, ‘fire-in-my-bones’ kind of hate. Running made me feel small – incapable.
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There are too many ‘in-betweens’ to tell of how affections have turned. But it at some point when I decided that I wanted to defeat this thing that had so many times defeated me.
I didn’t expect to like it, not even a little bit; but nonetheless, I wanted to run.
I’m not built to be a runner. My legs are in complete disproportion to my body. My physique is the farthest thing from that of the all-star runners that glide over the sidewalks at sub-human speeds. I am not fast. And my track record from the past few months, which details a few bloody falls, would suggest that I am not so graceful either.
But I have come to love that which I first loathed.
I have come to escape to the very thing I once tried to escape from.
I am a runner.
Not because of any capability, but because I love the sport. The transition from ‘walk’ to ‘jog’ to ‘run’ isn’t measured by the count of time taken to cover a mile, nor by the beats per minute at which ones heart pounds. The runner is not defined by the grounds his feet trace over, but by the posture he assumes toward the sport, by the way he enters into it, by the reasons he has for lacing up.
I run in pursuit of ascending something.
a hill.
a distance.
ultimately, myself.
I run to feel.
pain.
glory.
anything.
I run to feel something move and pulsate through my body.
I think it is fitting to consider running a fierce endeavor.
Running makes my insides groan.
It chafes both my skin and my ambitions raw.
It hurts - but it delivers.
I run to find my weakness. I run to breathe heavy, to exhale that which I wish to be free from.
But, there is a subtle danger when I am unable to determine if I am running toward something – or rather, away.
Where do I hope to arrive? Am I trying instead to depart?
Do I lace up to find freedom? Or do I leave to abandon myself?
There is a place where my remedy can also become my sickness, where my daring act becomes one of cowardly self-divergence. There is a point where sitting in the still is more venturesome than moving feet onward.
Audeamus -'let us dare' to run towards ourselves in a world where it is so easy to forget our names.
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