Honolulu, HI – I’ve always thought running was the best teacher I ever had. While at pace, I never felt better, then again, never felt worse either, sometimes just a couple of minutes apart. 

So I learned not to get too high when I was feeling good; not to get too low when feeling bad, because things were likely to come back around again soon enough. So you just soldier on, one stride at a time, making the best with what you still have in reserve. 

Another invaluable running credo: too much too soon will break down the system. The training effect requires applications of stress followed by a period of rest to allow our bodies to absorb of the training. What follows is new growth in fitness. The super shoe revolution has altered that formulation somewhat, but not its basic principle.

Fitness is like a house of cards in that you can build a very strong structure, but you have to be careful and concise upon adding any new layer. Increase the load too much, and the whole thing will collapse in a heap.

We have all done it, tried to do that extra track session, or one more repeat within a track session because we are feeling strong. Or, added an extra hill repeat, an extra long run. And what happens? You overtax your immune system and feel yourself getting sick. Or, you tweak an Achilles tendon or a calf muscle. Something always happens when you over stress the system. 

A country’s body politic is no different. Don’t get too high when things are going well. Don’t get too low when the vote goes against you. Instead, soldier on, holding to the beliefs you take as fundamental, while trying to convince the opposition of the righteousness of your argument by listening to theirs, as well. 

And similar to running, don’t overload the system with new stresses, especially in a difficult economic environment. When people are hurting, they won’t as readily accept what they might otherwise in different circumstances. 

In a shrinking world, convulsing in chaos, and trumpeting authoritarianism and polarity, a single run stands as an act of defiance. 

When everything around us seems intent on splitting us apart, and the ties that once bound us in union hang tattered, threatening to trip us off track, with this most simple of daily exercises, one achieves a stillness that reduces chaos to order, polarity to a recognition of unity, and contemplation to a focus and attention that ameliorates our fears by amplifying the resolution within. 

In that brief span, we become free, split off from the mundane and prosaic, as if having landed upon the Axis Mundi, that place where stillness and movement exist as one, as movement represents time, and stillness eternity. 

Time and time again, the simple act of stripping down to the togs of motion has simultaneously stripped away all the biases and differences that heretofore had come to define us. 

Amidst the rollicking throngs that meet to run through the myriad race courses on any given Sunday, neither a Democrat nor Republican could you identify, Christian or Jew, Muslim or heathen, just runners.

In this turbulent, tormented world, no matter what else we might not have in common, through the simple act of running together we reveal the common face of humankind, and make folly of the petty distinctions we struggle so hard to erect and maintain.

At speed we transcend the hard lines of religion, politics, and economic station that differentiate us on every other day, and in so doing, set the once-vaunted American melting pot back to the boil. 

That is quite a trick to pull off in today’s world of identity politics and hardline Us-versus-Them encampments. 

But the very simple act of running has proven capable of this assimilation, while the people have responded  as if in answer to a call from their own better angels.

In this season of political transition, with a new administration about to take over in Washington, D.C., Americans don’t agree on much beyond the fact that the nation is more divided than at any time since the 1960s, maybe even the 1860s. 

Yet in this divisive political time, in which identity politics have become the defining order, we still find that runners as a group remain human first before ever identifying as right-wing, left-wing, or centrist. It’s as if to say, ‘if we have this one thing in common, then all else becomes secondary.  Not immaterial, mind you, just less consequential, for at bottom this is who I truly am, and this is all I need to know to appreciate who you really are, as well.’

Stripped of their everyday, workaday costumes, runners discover a unity through the pursuit of a difficult, focused purpose, whether fast, slow, or moderate in that pursuit. Perhaps that’s the lesson for pols in Washington D.C. and elsewhere. 

The hope, as always, is that the lessons learned on foot – dedication, discipline, humility, resilience, goal-setting, etc. – will carry over into our larger lives. And in so doing, relieve us of our previous inelasticity and more bedeviling prejudices. 

That the best we can be can consistently be achieved by the simple act of placing one foot in front of another in rapid succession allows us to believe the same truth of others, with each stride but a momentary glimpse of what is on the way to becoming all we hope we can be. 

Wishing everyone a safe and joyful holiday season ahead.

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