I
Sometimes, when I run my frequent loop-de-loops on the many trails at Mt Tabor, and I see other people running their own loop-de-loops, so many of us running in various circles in the park, I think about how ridiculous we all are. Just running around, with no real purpose except the sheer physical activity of it (or who knows what purpose anyone else has) — just running up and down and around in circles.
II
This weekend, I hitched a ride down to Sisters, OR, with some people from my running group — there was a half marathon and a 50k race, and many of them were running one or the other. I was not, but I wanted to hang out and go for my own untimed, ungloried adventure run in a new place. These days I have zero interest in running organized events, though I acknowledge that the camaraderie and energy of them is super sweet and that the trail running community is a friendly, encouraging one. It’s probably my own failing that I can’t quite uncouple the idea that “running race” = “have to go really fast.” And I’m just not that interested in going really fast right now and haven’t quite figured out yet how to do a race without feeling that self-inflicted, unwanted pressure.
III
So instead of either organized race, I took myself on an adventure run of my own devising, which involved biking from where I was camped about 17 one-way miles, some paved and some unpaved, to a trailhead that I wasn’t sure I could find to run a trail I knew nothing about (and actually, I ended up stashing my bike about a mile away from the trailhead, since the road got such that I didn’t want to bike on it anymore — I figured it would be faster, easier, and much more pleasant to run). I saw several waterfalls. I sat by them for a while, because they were beautiful and I wasn’t being timed, and why the heck would I rush past all the beauty that I just made an explicit point to go adventuring to? I stopped and took pictures when I wanted, and ran hard when I wanted. It was glorious.
Like running loop do loops at Mt Tabor, it was all ultimately pointless — and like at Mt Tabor, that was exactly why it was so delightful. No expectations or necessary outcome other than adventure, discovery, joy.
IV
I just finished reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman, and as I’ve been doing all this outwardly pointless but utterly soul-filling stuff lately, I can’t get it out of my head. The basic premise (and I’ve already returned it to the library, so I can’t flip back through to cross-check my remembering) is that if we’re lucky and live to be 80 or so, that is still only approximately four thousand weeks of life. We are never, ever going to be able to do everything we want to in our if-we’re-lucky four thousand weeks, so all that bullshit about being maximally productive and efficient and getting everything anyone ever asks of you done with a stressless smile on your face — in fact, even the pressure we put on ourselves to always do more and more and more — is just flat-out ridiculous, and distracts us from the real questions we should ask ourselves about how we want to spend our time.
He also talks about the cultural “maximizing” of leisure time, how we have this cultural belief these days that you can’t just run, for example, you have to train for a 10k, at a certain pace; you can’t just joyride around on your bicycle, you have to hit your heartrate and mileage targets and prove it with your stats on strava. Basically, just like the work rat race with the seemingly unending pressure to “do more,” the same with leisure: you always “should” be improving, strategizing, maximizing. (He has lots to say about this kind of thinking and how it undermines intentional living, which I won’t talk about here except to say that I highly recommend this book:)
And I guess I’ve just been feeling super grateful. Grateful for my time so far in this world, grateful that I largely don’t feel the pressure to “maximize” everything in my life or prove my own worth/rationalize my right to exist with the number of things I accomplish. I am so far in the “do pointless things because they make me happy” phase of my life right now, and I’m really quite happy about that.
V
So I will continue running my pointless loop-de-loops and listening to the birds while I do so, and breathing hard because it feels good to me and I love the feeling of my body working. And I will look at all the other people also running in circles and hope that they are also doing something they love, pointless as it may be.