Running Revue: Mindfulness

It's mid-December and fall has finally arrived in Southern California.

Now, I'm not one for all of that year's-end-new-year reset business, 'cause face it, I'm really at core a Westerner and as such a believer in forward motion and progress, and all of that Eastern cyclicality stuff doesn't resonate with me, but I'm pretty ready for 2010 to be over.

Not only has it been a year of a number of personal setbacks but I'm now also working on my third cold of the season, which means that I'm buying out my pharmacy's stock of decongestants and may have to turn to local meth dealers ("no, you don't understand, I don't want the finished product, I want the Sudafed") for relief.  I'm looking forward to 2010 being over.

But one of the things that I'm learning is to be grateful for the way things are, even the crummy stuff, to be thankful for what is in the present - gratitude is why Thanksgiving rules the holidays in my book, way better than the ambition, the greed, and the crass commercialism of contemporary Christmases.  That mindfulness, presence, means that I appreciate this moment, let go of the past, and hope for the future.  Being in the moment - you can tell that it's powerful and worth something because, ironically, it was when Faust finally learned to be in the present that the Devil came for his soul.  Being in the moment gave the Star Wars prequels their only cool scene, that one where Qui-Gon Jinn is stuck in that weird, pointless series of force-field airlocks while he's giving chase to Darth Maul, and instead of pacing in agitation he just accepts the moment, shuts of his lightsaber and kneels to wait.  *SPOILER ALERT*  Sure, things didn't turn out the way he'd hoped, but accepting even defeat was when Obi Wan became really cool in the first Star Wars movie.

And just like being thankful for the past is part of being now, not being afraid of the future is part of being mindful, not worrying if 2011 will be like 2010, letting go of the what if I do a bad job, what if nobody likes me, what if Darth Maul lightsabers me through the breadbasket.

So even though 2010 majored in Suckness in the undergraduate college of life, I'm grateful, and come to think of it, there's actually a lot of good stuff that happened this year too (like running and starting this blog).  When I run, I can't let the distance ahead of me daunt me, I can't do anything about the mile that just passed, I can only put one foot in front of the other, and it's not whether you win or lose, it's whether you get to date the cheerleaders at the end (and my wife was a cheerleader, thank you very much).  Life isn't a marathon, it's an ultramarathon, with all of the attendant aches, pains, and sweat drying onto salty patches on your skin, along with the good stuff, like Antoine Dodson, double rainbows, and the alleged runner's high that everyone keeps talking about and that I have yet to experience.  And like the cool kids are saying, I've got to pick myself up, dust my shoulders off, and keep going.  Because if I don't keep moving, I don't get to eat.

Wait a minute... overly general platitudes... vague positivity... so this is the runner's high... I always thought being high meant that there'd be more hallucinating involved...

A Casual Jog, More Like a Stroll, in the Damp
6.93 mi.  56 min.:52 sec.  8:12 pace.