500 Words — Day Three: Suffering
There is nothing better than waking up early in the morning and then getting a good run in. Most people are allergic to exercise nowadays, but there is just something satisfying about putting on some shorts and a t-shirt and grinding out a few miles before the sun rises up. My shoes have over 500 miles and counting on them. Without the pain and suffering of those miles, I couldn’t brag about that.
Suffering is essential to life, but getting it in the correct order is very important out of getting the most out of it. Suffering first, then enjoying later comes with a lot more satisfaction than enjoying first and suffering later. This is lesson I learn every hangover. This is my hangover enlightenment. Everyone pays. You just choose when the payment is due and how the payment is inflicted. Suffering is a temporal state just the same as euphoria is a temporal state. My number one anti-depressant is suffering in the form of running. If you run long enough, you find that you’ll be too tired to feel bad about yourself and be content with laying there, being lazy, and taking a nap. Perhaps the problems of the world are not that life is harder than ever. The problem of the world, is that for some of us, life is too easy. So I say, voluntarily suffer a little more and maybe you’ll feel better. If not, at least you are healthier than you would be otherwise. That is if you didn’t injure yourself doing something hard. Try avoiding injury. The key word is voluntary. Suffering that you are forced to endure will always suck.
Imagine a mountain in the distance. Most people will see it and then pull out their phone and take a picture of it. Then they’ll go to their favorite social media site and slowly poisoning themselves until they have low self-esteem and look to medicate with some bad habit. But that mountain stands there for a reason. For somebody to climb it. And honestly climbing the mountain and seeing the top for yourself is better than the picture of the bottom or someone else’s picture from the top. The pixels can’t match the real experience or sense of satisfaction of taking the time to suffer to get to the top. The view was never the reward, although it is very nice to look at. The reward is the act of sacrificing one’s patience and one’s pleasure to find something deeper there. Is that the meaning of life? Probably not. But does that pain you feel after climbing the whole day feel better than that of a hangover? It sure does. Climb mountains not beer bottles.
What does the next pair of shoes and the next 500 miles look like? What perils does the next mountain bring? What problems can we solve by heading towards them straight on rather than backing out and coping by binging a Netflix show that you really don’t care too much about and eating half a tub — scratch that — the whole tub of cookies and cream. Hedonism is not the answer. Ultramarathons are also not the answer, but at least they are little closer to the answer. So start running. I’ll see you at 6 in the morning. Don’t forget to bring a headlamp.
