Why run?

It’s the end of the year, and we’re all asking the same thing: why?

Heart health, emotional health, lymphatic drainage blah blah blah. Yeah sure - those are important, but there’s one reason that sinks all of those to the significance of a flea.

Run to feel alive.

When I run, I know that I am here, in the world. I’m a cloud of electromagnetism and stardust. I’m a series of explosions, small and insignificant but yes, burning. My existence is one single bright spot for a moment so partial in the life of the universe as to seem invisible, but no, I am here. I say it with every firing muscle, with every ragged breath, and with every tear that forms and drops, heavy with salt, rolling down my open-pored and breathing skin.

The thing is, the flat, fat, mucky drudgery of adulthood and the crushing, 21st century-good-screen-bad-screen-always-on simulacra of culture conspire to gaslight us into thinking we are mud holes, nothings, slopping plops of partially eaten food and unanswered messages. Maybe, at the most, we are an infinite, howling yarp.

But no, not me, not us. At work, when I’m lucky, I’m the transparent eyeball; I am transcendence and I see through and with my fellow humans. But when I run, when I’m alone, I am stardust and lightning. I am a part of the ever-expanding universe. I feel the acid burn of firing muscles and I know, and you know, and the world knows: we are alive.

Happy new year, if it’s the new year to you. Running doesn’t know about the state of politics. The stars don’t have the capacity to care. Emulate them, and go run.