Stoic philosopher Epictetus (epic-TEE-tus) was born a slave in Rome around 50 CE. To sketch how desperate his situation was, we don’t even know what name his parents gave him; “Epictetus” was the name his slavemaster gave him, and it just means “acquired”, which is pretty gross.
Despite starting life in this insane situation, Epictetus became a famous Stoic philosopher. He provided us with the Enchiridion (en-cuh-ri-dion), one of my favorite works. “Enchiridion” roughly translates to “handbook for living”, and it is packed with useful, grounding logic.* So, in that spirit, no matter how your week has been, pick up the Enchiridion, and let’s live.
The run below happened in 2003. I was lucky enough to be able to study abroad, and I was weird enough to not care how weird running in Europe was at that time. As you read it, remember two things:
As Epictetus tells us, “it’s not what happens to you, but how you react that matters.” The most important part of any situation is when you confront it, when you say to yourself “This is happening, and I can do x,y, or z about it.”
This is not a story about being followed by two strange men in a car at night; it’s a story about outsmarting two strange men in a car at night. It’s the reaction that matters, not the situation you find yourself in.
Hope you enjoy the story, and for today, remember: go run.
Out Running
Florence, Italy, 2003
I had never seen another runner in Florence and hardly ever one in Europe. The chunky shoes, dorky clothing and sweat do not blend with this dignified continent where stone buildings shade glamorous people who have never seemed to hurry anywhere. The slow, pastel atmosphere doesn’t match the history of this dark continent, and their disdain for runners makes me nervous. Cognitive dissonance sometimes seems a continent-wide sport. Despite all this, I still run every day. Sometimes you’re just going to stick out if you’re going to live your life.
I go out every night through the cold, vast, stone foyer and the 5 inch thick wooden door that is actually a small door set inside a giant one. The front of my building is yellow with the portal surrounded by gray stone blocks stacked one on top of the other while in the center, at the top, an inverted keystone holds the pressure of internal collapse at bay.
It is damp on this particular night, with the cobblestones covered with a thin, wet, slick layer of oil and water. I stick to the tiny, high sidewalks where I can because cars are not used to runners, and it would be easy to slip badly. I run to where a sharp, triangular building indicates a switchback, and using the building as leverage, I sweep myself around the sharp angle that changes my direction and sends me towards the River Arno.
After a few streets the crowded buildings open up around me and I am on the riverside. The Arno is not a big river to someone who is used to the Coosa and the Mississippi and the Hudson, but it is big enough to be dark and violent around at its rocky places and at the locks that were built across it centuries ago. I run beside it, enjoying the low mist and the haze it forms from bank to bank across the river.
I turn right on a modern bridge. This is a work-a-day bridge; used by bread trucks and commuters and construction workers. To my right I can see the rickety yellow and pink houses of Ponte Vecchio, so picturesque that it is hard to believe it is a real, working place. Tourism is most of its work, but you can still find real quality there, in some places, and when it is deserted late at night it is magic to walk across it with your lover.
The work-a-day bridge has none of this charm. It is flat, with regular, concrete pylons and brick facing. The sidewalk is wide and smooth. I concentrate on it because my pace has started to bite now and the time for admiring old yellow bridges is over. I hit the Oltrarno and turn right immediately.
From here I will travel a series of streets that zig zag together up the side of a colossal hill. I do not pay much attention to the silent apartment buildings that crowd around me or to the lines of cars parallel parked alongside me. I am running in the middle of the streets because the sidewalks are so narrow and high and sloped that they are useless and I only see a few cars crossing in front of me on their journeys down to the river to the bars and restaurants there.
Through narrowed eyes and mist-covered eyelashes I notice a trembling light reflecting in the side mirrors of the parked cars around me. It’s the headlights of a car coming up behind me moving very slowly, too slowly. Sometimes people are careful when they see me, but somehow this pace is different. My brain sharpens to attention. At the next road I swerve onto the sidewalk but do not look behind me. The headlights continue their slow review of the road in front of me, peeking from behind my left shoulder.
I take a glance and see the roundish-squarish headlights of one of a common European compacts, nothing special, and two heads in the front seats. I am concerned. They are clearly tracking me. I push myself faster and the car increases its speed, its tiny motor revving. I cross the next street and fling myself into the dark block, sprinting. Halfway down the block I hit all my weight onto my right toe, pivot 360 degrees in a turn so neat and quick that it would have made my ballet mistresses clap with joy and convince basketball coaches that I must have some sort of talent, somewhere. I slam my left leg down and grip my toes into concrete, popping the ball of my calf out as my hamstrings sing in violin-tightness. I lung into the sidewalk as I use every muscle to explode in the direction I have just come from. I shoot past the little car and two dark heads turn to watch me even while they still roll forward.
At the corner I pivot 90 degrees and head up the hill. I hear gears mesh and the whining top-spin reverse of a manual transmission. I am scared now. I rake my palm across the rough surface of the corner building in a primitive braking action and grip a stone’s upright surface to whip myself right and into the next street. The silence is only populated by my breathing and the tapping of my toes which I keep as quiet as I can simply by not letting them touch the ground for too long. I hear the disorienting murmur of the car’s motor ricocheting off the buildings’ facades. The sound slows. I crouch down between two parallel parked cars and I hold my breath. I hear the small car coming again, slowly. I see its headlights start to creep up the street. They had either seen me turn into this street or guessed correctly. I must have made them angry with my pivot and the quick reversal of the game they are playing. As they approach, I scootch myself slowly around the corner of the car that’s towards the direction they’re coming from. I inch myself up onto the sidewalk without exposing my head over the car hood. I hide myself behind the front passenger wheel as their small car passes me by. I watch the light from their headlights and taillights through the spaces between parked cars. Far along the street, at the end of the block, I see them brake and I slip back off the sidewalk and in between the parked cars, for fear that they’ll peer down the sidewalk and see me there. They screech the wheels as they turn violently down towards the river. They had gotten tired of me, which was my point. I stand up and look after them.
In over a decade of running, I have been followed before. But I know that the best way to win hide-and-seek is to end the game, to not wait to be found but instead to hunt the seeker. When I was a kid, playing, I would follow the seeker silently while they looked for me. From the hollows inside bushes and from behind animal- and water-created walls of turf, I would watch them until their exhilaration faded and they would shout that I must be cheating and that this was boring and that they were going to quit. Then the game would be over and my heart could unclench in my chest. I would wait until they were gone and then step out from my hiding place. I didn’t want them to know where I’d been, in case I needed that hiding place again. I remember all this in the wet, Florentine night, with silent windows set in calm, stone facades surrounding me. I feel my heart unclench and I am proud that my country girl games helped this city woman survive. I look after the small car for a few moments until my breathing calms down. I lean forward and run again.
Soon I am at the entrance to a road that curves lazily upwards. I turn left onto it and run lightly up to the final crest of the hill I have been climbing. David greets me. He is a fake David, a replica to the real one that stands in the Academia below and across the river. He stares forever towards Siena and I stare at him and then across the Arno to the Duomo’s egg-shaped roof and sausage-like nave extending from it. It is all so beautiful but of course there is danger in it as well. There’s danger everywhere.
I breathe the night air which is still moist but no longer wet. I turn and run softly down the curving road. I know that, if they are mad enough, the two men in the small car might have chosen to wait for me, so I choose different zig zag streets and descend fast to the riverside, to the relative safety of the few still-open restaurants facing the Arno. I cross the modern bridge to Via Ghibellina. I make the switch back. I tap along the cobblestones and sidewalks to the yellow building with the giant portal surrounded by the gray stones. I push in the small, heavy door until it gives way and I feel the cold inside air rush to greet me.
*Definitely recommend the audiobook, as the Enchiridion is a transcription of conversations. It’s nearly impossible to follow in text form, but incredibly enlightening in audio version.
My very first race was in Florence - a 10k for which I was thoroughly unprepared but still ran thinking of my grandmother, who’d just lost the ability to walk. Thanks for taking me back.
I think Epictetus would be proud of your response that night. I believe that “bad” people are just another feature of the physical world, along with weather and terrain and wildlife and disease. You can’t wish them away, but you can steer around them and get on with life.