I’ve been running, and blogging about it, for long enough
that I feel emboldened to make the following observation with complete
confidence: Running has not made me a better person.
It hasn’t made me a worse person, mind you. I haven’t gone on crime sprees to pay reg fees for races. Yet all those qualities that
obsessive runners ascribe to one another – tough, strong, determined, badass –
I wouldn’t say I now have in any more abundance than before I became a runner
or than anyone I know who doesn’t run. That I have the fortitude to keep moving
for many hours in a row has not, I fully recognize, transcended to other
aspects of my life. I am not any more likely now to rescue orphans from burning
buildings than I was 20 years ago, unless those orphans are 50 miles away and no
one else could get to them and their building was made from some extremely slow-burning
material such that I could make it there in time (while taking brief but
regular stops to hydrate and fuel).
Daily I see social media posts assuring their readers that
we are stronger than we think, that failure is not an option, that we are
enough and that we can do anything we want if we just try our best. I know those
who post them mean well, and I know some people find comfort and inspiration in
them. I don’t reject them out of dark-hearted perversity but rather from
personal experience. A 54-year-old woman cannot do anything she wants; no one
can, and to say otherwise is a slap in the face to anyone who has ever wanted
something desperately and didn’t get it. I’m not always strong, not always
enough, and as for failure, well, if anything, I’ve experienced even more of
that as a runner than ever before. I’ve DNF’d. I’ve DNS’d. I’ve bawled and cursed
and thrown tantrums because a race didn’t go the way I wanted, and that has
happened more times than I’ve soared triumphant across finish lines radiating
victory from every sweaty pore.
And let me tell you, that’s one of the best things about it.
In between long runs, I teach at a high school whose
official name includes the word “laboratory” (though no one ever uses that name)
because a big part of the school’s mission is experimentation. Teachers are
encouraged to try new, innovative methods of teaching; students are encouraged
to be more than just test-takers but also risk-takers; the hallways are a
raucous jumble of noise and color rather than the beige-and-right-angles of a
staid institution. Of course, mission statements are lovely but rarely borne
out on an everyday basis; every challenge to time-honored pedagogy is
guaranteed to meet with resistance, and while it’s pleasing to imagine one’s self
a risk-taker, there’s no grade for that on one’s report card and would the
Ivies really pick a 2.0 risk-taker over a 4.0 with a perfect SAT?
That’s what’s so insidious about experimentation: you don’t
know how it’s going to turn out. And it’s one thing to experiment with a new
hair color or a cuisine you’ve never tried before; it’s another to pour one
unknown after another into the Erlenmeyer flask of the soul and hope you don’t explode.
That, however, is precisely why I’ve come to see running as an experiment rather
than a proof. I don’t “prove” anything in running, not to anyone else and not
even to myself. Good scientists know that if you go into an experiment aiming
to prove something, you probably will, because bad science can support anything
you want. A true experiment doesn’t rationalize the outcome. What’s more, an
experiment takes place in a controlled environment, so its consequences are
limited. If I fail at running, no one is affected but me, and I’ll get over it.
Whether I’m a bad person or a weak person or a thoroughly mediocre person is
irrelevant. I tried something to see what it would be like. Since I keep trying
it, what it must be like at least some of the time is enjoyable. What it
is the rest of the time is nothing less than feeling very much alive.
My wish for my students of the class of 2023 is that they
can find some way to live their lives as an experiment – that they do something
with the ultimate goal of caring less about the ultimate goal than the
experience along the way. Don’t envision what you’re going to say about it on
social media. Maybe don’t even post about it at all. (Trust me, it does still
happen.) And don’t make your self-worth hinge on it one way or another. Are you
an amazing person because you did the thing, or a worthless loser because you
didn’t? Who cares – what do you want to try next?
