We’re all just trying to figure out the Why, aren’t we.
Why do the things we do?
In the face of all else, all life’s paths and choices, why are you here doing this?
Are any of us who we were meant to be?
What we come to realise, of course, is that these questions have no ends. If you’re lucky, you find something that stops you pursuing the answer, even if only for a short while.
Chasing waves. Running through the woods. Slicing an arc through untracked snow. Creating something. Take your pick of vices.
These are the things that keep us going, the pursuit of momentary bliss, not lifelong contentment. And it’s the chase that’s important. You need to love the chase. Because we’ll never be satisfied, not really. No matter who we become, we’ll always want more.
But no-one tells you this. No-one tells you who you’re supposed to be.
Growing up, I never liked birthdays.
I didn’t admit this, because everyone else seemed to love them. Kids at school chittered in anticipation then ran round squealing, blowing conical horns and dropping cake crumbs everywhere.
Too much colour, too much noise, too much forced expectation of happiness.
All I understood, the thing that rang true and clear as a gunshot in still air, was what it meant to be One.Year.Older.
Because I was waiting.
Waiting for the thing that felt like it was meant for me. Waiting for some kind of call to a hero’s journey, I suppose.
I think I expected my purpose to appear in a biblical flash of light. Probably I’d read too many stories. My world-view was shaped by Susan Cooper books. Fantastic things happened to people in stories, magical things. I wondered when the magic was going to happen for me.
And so every passing year was a ghost death of something I was still trying to understand. Time felt then, and it still does, like a forced march towards an opaque destination.
It’s the threat of nothingness. Not validation, nor acceptance, nor contentment.
Just
resounding
nothingness.
As the years went on I became ever more fatalistic, giving up the chase, becoming a boulder in a rushing stream. People, chances, decisions, interests, successes, failures - all seemed to flood by and disappear, and I rolled on to nowhere in particular.
Or that’s how it felt.
Eventually, I found myself in a town in the Highlands. Nowhere I’d gone deliberately. That was fifteen years ago now.
It wasn’t the life I’d imagined. Maybe it never is.
It wasn’t that I was unhappy. I had a job I enjoyed, met my partner, had kids, bought a house. Ticked all the boxes. But I still felt untethered, somehow. I still needed something to chase.
Then I started to run, and suddenly, there it was.
And I know what you’re thinking, that this is another personal-transformation-through-running story, but it isn’t, not exactly.
Running didn’t transform me. It was much more straightforward than that. It gave me a sense of purpose, something simple to pursue no matter the time or place. Running wasn’t dreams of waves in distant places, or abstract ideas of things I might want to do. Running was here, and it was now. It was a landscape for my mind, right outside the door.
Knowing I was physically capable of travelling long distances alone and on foot gave me hope. I spent a lot of time outside when I was young, in the sea mainly, and until I started to run I hadn’t realised how much this connection had been eroded. I still did lots of things outside, I surfed when I could, rode trails on my bike, went snowboarding in winter. But mostly it felt adjunct to the landscape. Running felt part of it.
I feel more connected to place now, to the changes and cycles. At night I think of the wind, blowing through the dark, ushering leaves to ground. Just as I think of the rain, tumbling through the blackness, and the river swelling and surging on.
These things happen whether I witness them or not. And there’s something comforting in that. The passing of time doesn’t need to be a creeping shadow, it can be an emerging light.
A run can feel like a tiny essay to this world. Maybe I don't know what it’s about when I start, but it’s always in service of something. I’ll work it out as I go, and I’ll be a little closer to somewhere at the end.
Running isn’t the answer to everything, but it’s certainly part of it. I go through phases like everyone else. But I know it’ll always be there.
I can’t tell you that the simple act of running through the woods can change your life, but I know some of why it might. I know the movement is important. I know the effort is important. I know the connection is important. I know we need something to chase that can’t be bought or sold.
And the finishing, the finishing might be the most important of all.
A run isn’t life-changing, but then few things you do in a single moment are. It’s about increments. I never understood that. And although I don’t know where my feet will lead me, I do know that every run feels like something I can complete, and in a life that feels constantly undone or unravelling, the value of finishing something can’t be understated.
And that hard-won incremental progress, to somewhere, maybe, is all we can ask for.
You’re never as far away as you think you are.
This piece was inspired by the following film that I saw at the excellent Sidetracked Magazine tour in Fort William recently (and have watched multiple times since).
Nothing else today is more worthy of four minutes of your time.
As fresh today as it was in 1995.