The more our lives are dominated by the instrumental, the more we will value pleasure. The function of joy is quite different. Joy can assume many experiential forms. There is the joy of focus, the experience of being completely immersed in what one is doing. There is the joy of dedication, the experience of being dedicated to the deed and not the outcome, the activity and not the goal. There is the joy of enduring, the experience of playing the game as hard as you can play it, of giving everything you have to the game and leaving nothing in the tank, no matter the experiential toll this exacts. There is the joy of defiance, wild and fierce: no, you will not break me, not here, not today. Joy is found in the heartbeat of the run, whatever form this takes. But, ultimately, all of these come to the same thing. Joy is the experience — the recognition — of intrinsic value in life. Joy is the recognition of the things in life that possess value in themselves — the things that are valuable for their own sake: the things in life that are worthy of love. Pleasure distracts us from what does not have intrinsic value. Joy is the recognition of what does. Pleasure is a way of feeling. But joy is a way of seeing. Joy is something that pleasure is not and can never be. It is the recognition of the places in life where all the points and purposes stop.
Most of us will leave this life in the same way we entered it: scared, confused and alone. But when we came into this world we were met with loving arms and soothing words. On the way out of it, we will be met by nothing. The life of every living thing follows these general contours, and to this extent life is sad and deeply unfortunate. But with humans, it is something else. I used to worry about what the future had in store for me, and this, I suppose, is bad enough. But I know that this is what life has in store for my children also, and that is far worse. Sometimes, as Wittgenstein once remarked, the most difficult things to see in life are the most obvious, and they are the most difficult to see precisely because they are the most obvious. This now seems obvious to me. I can do nothing of any great significance to protect my children from life and this evil place to which I have brought them. To be sure, I can help out a little when their lives are going well, when they are growing, burgeoning and their encounters with intrinsic value in their lives crowd most thickly. But when the going gets tough, I’ll be out of here like the worst deadbeat dad. In a few short decades — and that is assuming I have a few decades left in me — I shall abandon them to face their gradual disappearance without me. But can I live on in their memories, and provide for them a powerful example of how to live in this malignant place and how to face their gradual disappearance? Perhaps, but unfortunately the memories we make when we are young are sickly children. My sons have no need of memories yet — why would they? And by the time they do, I shall no longer be around to be remembered. As Milan Kundera once remarked, before being forgotten we are transformed into kitsch. The memories that remain of me will be caricatures, vague suggestions or themes where a man used to be. For we humans, understanding our fate is part of our fate. And because of this the fate of those we love becomes part of our fate. This means that our lives are more than sad or unfortunate: they are tragic. Tragedy is born when misfortune and understanding meet: when one not only suffers and dies but at the same time understands that this suffering and death is irrevocable.
If there were a meaning to this life it would be that which redeems it. It would be something that, as Camus said, makes life ‘worth the trouble’. Nietzsche went further than this — a meaning in life must allow us not merely to endure life, but to love it: ‘My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it — all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary — but love it.’ Amor fati — the love of fate — is a lot to ask. Sometimes I can almost deal with backward. I’ve been very fortunate in my life. But even so, it is truly difficult not to regret at least a few of my past idiocies or indiscretions. Some people tell me they would not change a thing. Personally, I suspect I would. But backwards pales into insignificance when you compare it with forwards. To love this fate is, I suspect, an impossible task.
And yet, there are moments when I come close. Fundamentally, there is a difference between a life that is lived chasing what is important and a life lived immersed in and surrounded by it. The two types of life are separated by a vast, unbridgeable chasm. There are those who run in order to chase something else. And there are those who run simply to run. To the extent there is a meaning to be found in this life, I cannot see how it could be anything other than this: do not chase, just run. A life dominated by instrumental value is a life spent chasing, of hunting down one thing for the sake of something else. Instead, find what is Good in life, love what is Good in life, surround yourself with it and hold on to it with all the strength you have.
Running and the pack, both canine and human: these have consistently been the twin poles of intrinsic value — The Good — in my life. When I run, I am immersed in The Good. When I run with my pack, although the pack will change, I am surrounded by The Good. We cannot always find a pack — circumstances sometimes conspire against us in that way. But it is still possible to find The Good. To do that, it is enough to put on a pair of running shoes and keep running until you find yourself in the run’s beating heart. If you keep going, it will happen in the end.
In these moments when I am immersed in and surrounded by The Good, if I cannot love fate I am at least reconciled with it. I am reconciled with fate because I am unable to make myself care enough to wish that it were different. This is hardly the same as loving fate — but it is an accommodation. And that is the best I can do. For these brief moments, nothing that has happened before, nothing that will happen after is of the slightest consequence. I would no more desire a difference in the past or future than I would request that a lizard that bathes in the sun, as the pack and I drift past, be moved from one basking rock to another. In these moments, my fate has no dominion. I cannot love my fate, but I can at least be as impassive as it is, as impassive as the rock on which the lizard lies. In these moments, at least, I am equal to my fate. In these times when all the points and purposes of life stop, that is where the chase ends and the run really begins.
In the beating heart of the run, I hear an echo of what I once was and what I once knew. When the heartbeat of the run embraces me, holds me tight, I am returned to what I was before the fall. When the rhythm of the run holds me tight, I run in a field of joy. Surrounded by it, warmed by it from the outside in. In these moments, the run whispers to me: her whispers are the thoughts that come and go, out of the blue and into the black. She whispers to me a truth that I once knew but could not remember, like a dream that stood and slowly faded just beyond the edges of recall. These are whispers of joy, of what it is to be free, and of what is truly important in a life like this — a life that holds us naked and dying. She whispers to me of my time in Eden.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to my editor, Sara Holloway, for her patient and invaluable advice over the months as this book slowly took on its final form, and for encouraging me to follow the emerging thoughts wherever they led. Thanks to Anne Meadows who was kind enough to read an entire draft of this book and made some very useful suggestions. Thanks also to Benjamin Buchan for his excellent copy-editing, and to Miranda Baker for excellent proofreading and more.
Thanks, as always, to my agent, Liz Puttick. My thanks also to the magic fingers of Bruce Wilk, the physiotherapist who succeeded in breaking down decades of scar tissue in my left calf — efforts without which the events that formed the basis of Chapters 1 and 7 would never have happened. No doubt, I shall be seeing you about my right calf in the not too distant future.
I’m almost convinced that running is a place where I channel long-forgotten thoughts: of thinkers read and largely forgotten, of thinkers buried long ago and whose thoughts have similarly been buried somewhere in my brain while it goes about its
day-to-day business of keeping me alive and mostly sane. Many of the thoughts which brushed by me when I ran, almost like I was standing still, and which find their way into this book in various ways, are the thoughts of people such as Plato, Moritz Schlick, Arthur Schopenhauer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Aristotle, David Hume and René Descartes.
Most of all, my greatest debt is to the pack that has been good enough to share its life with me, and helped me understand the difference between a life spent chasing what is important and a life spent immersed in it. Thanks, first, to my canine pack. Thank you Boots, Pharaoh, Sandy, Brenin, Nina, Tess and Hugo, for sharing the trails with me over the years: lazy so-and-so that I am, I probably would never have run them without you. Thanks to my human pack. Thanks to my mother and father, for ensuring my life was never going to turn out dogless. Thanks to my sons, Brenin and Macsen, for reminding me, each in your inimitable way, of something I had long forgotten — something, indeed, that I was destined to forget. And, finally, thanks to Emma, whom I believe I once described as the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met and the kindest woman I’ve ever known. I wasn’t wrong.
Index
Achilles tendon, 46, 105, 117–18, 149, 162, 175–6
aerobic exercise, 43
age
freedom of, 24, 44
and wisdom, 152
ageing, 140–1
see also decline
agriculture, 66
Alabama, 79–81, 159
alcohol, 11–12
altitude, 149
Alzheimer’s, 52
Americans
and anxiety, 85
and holidays, 84–5
and running, 7–9
and work, 89
amor fati, 202
anamnesis, 28
anger, 126
anguish, 172, 180, 200
anole lizards, 103
ants, 124
apes, 66, 69–70, 125
Aristotle, 61, 64–5, 75, 87
Athens, 184–5, 189, 192, 195
athletics, 41–2
attention, 50
axons, 140–1
Badwater, 8, 16–17
Barnes, Julian, 15, 25
Barry, Dave, 6
bees, 124
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 162
Bekele, Kenenisa, 190
Ben-Shahar, Tal, 197
Bentham, Jeremy, 197
Bible, the, 192
Black Mountains, 34–5
bodily constitution, 44
see also facticity
Bolt, Usain, 17
boxing, 20, 37, 39
brachiation, 70
brain
associative nature, 52–3
effects of running, 48–54
encephalization, x
zero power hypothesis, 53–4
Brenin, 56–65, 71, 75, 79–81, 136–41, 148, 193
Buddhist monks, 53
calf muscles, 3–4, 146–7, 155–6, 162, 175–6
Camus, Albert, 28, 182, 202
Canal du Midi, 135, 138–9
capitalism, 89
causes, 61, 170, 173, 178–9
efficient, 61, 63–5, 71, 75, 78
final, 64, 75–8
formal, 64–5, 71, 75
material, 64–5, 71, 75
Cephalus, 144, 146
cerebellum, 50, 54
cerebral cortex, 65–6
cerebral oedema, 16
Charles Fort, 58, 68, 76, 146
chess, 94–5
chimpanzees, 66, 127
choices, 171
choking (‘the yips’), 92–3
Cicero, 23, 194
cognitive abilities, x, 118
Col du Minier, 149
communism, 89
conscious experience, 50
consciousness, 115–20, 166–70, 173–5
objects of, 167–9
Cordain, Loren, 67
cortisone, 12–13
coyotes, 125
Crick, Francis, 50
cricket, 20–1, 36–40, 92–3
cross-country running, 40
CSI: Miami, 82
Cwmbran, 35, 41
Darwin, Charles, 125
Dasein, 183
Davies, Idris, 35
death, 14–15, 143–4
decline, 140–6, 151–2
Deisseroth, Karl, 50
dementia, 52
Descartes, René, 22–3, 30, 159–61, 169
dinosaurs, 142–3
distance runners, 42–3, 190
DNA, 131
Dogs
genes, 127
legislation, 104
puppies, 129–30
dysentery, 129
eidos, 189
elephants, 142
emotions, origin and content of, 126–7
energy, competition for, 113–14, 116–17, 122–4, 126
enjoyment, 94–6, 116–17, 119
Enlightenment, 144
entropy, 113, 134
Epicurus, 143
Etang de Thau, 136
Euclidean geometry, 28
evil, 192
evolution
human, 66–7, 70–5
fish, 72–3
K-selection, 142–3
and love, 125–8
r-selection, 142–3
of social groups, 124–6
wolves and dogs, 68–70
exhaustion, 51–2
facticity, 44, 175–6, 181
faith, 8–9
feelings, 199–200
flamingos, 147
flatfish, 72–3
forms, 189–91, 194
freedom, 21–3, 172–3, 178, 204
of age, 24, 44
and knowledge, 29–31
of youth, 20–1, 23–4, 44
frontal cortex, 50, 54
fun, 196
games, 89–94, 96, 187–9, 195, 198, 200
gamma oscillations, 50–1, 53–4
Garonne, river, 136
Gebrselassie, Haile, 40, 190
genes, 124, 126–8, 130
genetic fallacy, 126
Gestell, xii, 181–2
gluteus maximus, 66
Good, The, 190–1, 194–5, 203–4
gorillas, 66
gout, 10–13
grasp over reach hypothesis, 18
happiness, 144–5, 196–200
Hardrock, 16–17
hedonists, 144
Heidegger, Martin, xi–xii, 181–3
Heinrich, Bernd, x, 7, 42
hippocampus, 48
holidays, 84–5
Hugo, 2, 13, 103–11, 113, 122, 127, 135–6, 141, 146, 148, 190, 206
human societies, 125
Hume, David, 161, 169
hunter-gatherers, 66–7
immortality, objective, 99
India, 129
Industrial Revolution, 35
information processing, and rhythm, 48–52
instrumental value, xi–xiii, 87–8, 93–4, 100, 183–4, 191–4, 196, 200, 203
intentionality, 167
intrinsic value, xiii, 87–8, 92–3, 100, 153, 172, 188–9, 191–5, 198, 203–4
and joy, 200–1, 204
and Platonic Good, 191–2, 194–5
running and, 92–3, 97, 100, 180, 184, 193–5, 203
introspection, 161
joy, 150–3, 172, 180, 199–201, 204
Julius Caesar, 15
Kant, Immanuel, 188
Karnazes, Dean, 7
Ketterle, Wolfgang, 51
Keys 100, 19
Kid Rock, 162
kin altruism, 126
Kinsale, 56–8, 89, 96, 101, 103, 146, 155
Knockduff Lodge, 62, 68
Koch, Christof, 50
Kolnai, Aurel, 14
Kundera, Milan, 202
Lake Okeechobee, 84
Layard, Richard, 197
Leadville, 8, 17
life, meaning of, xiv–xv, 25–8, 86, 100, 153, 182–
4, 202
Tolstoy and, 97–100
linguistic conventions, 167–8
living things, structure of, 114
love, 122–8, 130–2, 151
lusory attitude, 90–1, 95, 187
McDougall, Christopher, 7
mammals, 141–3
Marathon, battle of, 192
Marathon des Sables, 8, 16–17
marathon running
Cartesian phase, 159–65
chip time, 180–1
city marathons, 5
Humean phase, 161–5
music and, 162
origins of, 192
pace runners, 156, 176
Sartrean phase, 165
Spinozist phase, 162–5
training, 2–3
ultramarathons, 8, 16–17
meditation, 52
memories, 33–4, 53, 81, 201–2
memory, and anticipation, 118–19
mice, 48, 142
midlife crises, 16–18, 20–1, 24
mind
and intrinsic value, 194
states of, 161
mind-body dualism, 22–3, 159–61
money, love of, 192
monkeys, 125, 129–30, 132
Murakami, Haruki, 49
muscle fibres, 42–3
myelin sheaths, 140–1
Mynydd Maen, 34–5, 38, 40, 43, 49, 55
Nantyglo, 35
natural resources, xii
neurogenesis, 48
neuronal action potential, 141
neurons, 140–1
Newport, 35, 39
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 145, 202
nihilists, 26
Nina, 56–8, 61–4, 68, 71, 75, 79–80, 82, 84, 88, 100–1, 105–6, 110, 137–8, 148–50
Oates, Joyce Carol, 49
Olympian gods, 186–9, 195
O’Nuallain, Sean, 53–4
oocytogenesis, 142
optimism, 8–9
optogenetics, 50
orangutans, 66
Orb, river, 79, 133, 135, 141
osteo-arthritis, 12
pain, 176–9
Palmetto Bay, 82–4
parietal cortex, 50, 54
Parkes, David, 41
parvalbumin, 50
Pasteur, Louis, 61
pessimism, 120
Pheidippides, 192–5
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