Running with the Pack (26 page)

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