Unmotivated
Keep going when everything tries to drag you down
On running into a friend in the street after several months, 2011:
Me: “Hey! How are things?!” Friend: “Oh you know…my depression keeps me pretty busy.”
The interaction above actually happened. My friend wasn’t being glib; the year before, he had left the extremely restrictive religious community into which he was born, and he was still grappling with homesickness, guilt, and the sheer overwhelm of encountering the world without the insulation of his religion. His depression was keeping him really busy, to the point it was hard for him to take care of himself.
I hope no one reading this newsletter has challenges like my friend had and probably still has, but to a lesser extent we all share his problem: our depression can keep us pretty busy. It’s a tough time right now in the world at large and in the United States in particular. There’s a big election looming, war rages around the world, and SpaceX has said it plans to puncture our atmosphere with multiple rocket launches every single day* in the near future. I don’t know about you all, but humanity’s fragile bubble has never seemed closer to complete deflation.
In times like this, even the most motivated and dedicated runners, even the ones with decades-long practices, can feel unmotivated. Sheer, unmitigated anxiety can stop us in our tracks, keep us staring out of the window for hours or, worse, scrolling on our phones for news, any news, that tells us it will all be better. It’s easy to drop a run in weeks like this.
All I have to say is: resist. Resist the urge to skip today; resist the urge to stop and walk. Put your workout clothes on; lace up your shoes; do whatever little weird leg movements you do before your runs, lean forward, and take that first hop. Then, keep going. Keep moving; keep leaning forward. Every step you take is a step against anxiety and immobilization, and every lung-expanding breath sends giddy, optimistic oxygen to every muscle, every tendon, and every organ. This is what sanity looks like. This is it.
I know it’s a total meme for runners to be like “I must be crazy” and for non-runners to be like “You’re all lunatics!” but those memes are wrong. If you want to manage your emotions; if you want to show up for yourself and for the ones you care about, I’ll say this again and again and again: go run.
Well said!