In David Foster Wallace’s posthumous, final novel The Pale King he explores the concept of tedium and boredom in the context of being a paper-pusher for the IRS (apparently excruciating, drone-like work). As expected, DFW is unfailingly brilliant in this rough-hewn, unfinished book, and, of course, doesn’t hesitate to broach some unsettling questions. In the book’s “Forward” (it doesn’t show up until after eight full chapters), Wallace openly wonders about why people find boredom and dullness to be so abhorrent.
Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to
provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always
there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us (whether or not we’re consciously
aware of it) spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at
least, from feeling directly or with our full attention.
I’m not convinced that our collective penchant for distraction is quite as morbid as that (Wallace, did, after all, ultimately commit suicide), but it is a valid question: what are we distracting ourselves from?
Yesterday I bought an Exogen Ultrasound Bone Healing System. As the Smith & Nephew rep, Liz, explained to me about its science and application (the idea is that it affects healing on a cellular level for all cells, not just bone matrix–I don’t have a stress fracture), conversation of course turned to what I do as a runner. Almost immediately, she wanted to know, what do you think about when you’re out there running for that long? Almost everyone unfamiliar with the ultra marathon distances asks this.
As runners, of course, we know that it is almost impossible to answer this question with any kind of brevity without sounding like an imbecile. If answered honestly, the response isn’t going to be interesting or sexy. So we turn to cliches. “It’s my time to clear my head.” “It’s my meditation.” “It’s my alone time, for me.” “It keeps me sane.”
Yes. This is all true, I suppose, but it also skirts the issue. The answer, for me, is paradoxical. I think of nothing and everything. Usually at the same time. Which is just another way of saying that I’m not really thinking. Rather, I’m listening. To myself, in an as unintentional manner as possible.
This inherently self-centered act of listening–letting anything and everything and nothing bop in and out of my mind without intent–is, after 17 years of running, usually the first thing I miss when I can’t run. Running is that space each day for me to just be, with as few unnatural distractions as possible.
As Wallace points out, listening to oneself with full attention is something that, as a species, in modern society, it seems we’ve become almost phobically averse to. I’m not willing to place a value-judgement on that–I’m not convinced that there’s anything inherently good or better about being comfortably alone–but I do know, that for me, it’s an important and unique part of my daily routine. And it does seem to be something, that, as a culture, we’re rapidly moving away from.
Anyone who has bumped up against the limits of their physiology in an endurance event knows that it isn’t usually the actual physical that does the limiting; it’s the mind, the spirit, even. The last 20 miles of a tough 100 mile race is nothing else if not an intense session of self-examination, of feeling with one’s full attention.
It’s also often a lot of other things–suffering, tedium, vomiting, stumbling, etc., etc. But, ultimately, these things are all secondary to the very real, very personal process of finding the motivation to get to the finish line, and of feeling the experience in a very visceral manner. There’s a reason 100mi races are so compelling and yet so difficult to relate to someone who hasn’t experienced one. I think it’s because the experience is so personal. A lot more personal than we tend to get with ourselves in almost any other segment of life, because we’re almost always willfully distracting ourselves.
Running is an activity that often requires our full attention, and while I’m not willing to say that that necessarily makes us better people, I do think that regularly practicing the act of carefully tuning in–not tuning out–ultimately leaves us more open to the emotions of, among other things, humility and compassion. And, even if it requires willfully engaging in the dull and tedious to get there, I think it’s safe to suggest that the world could always use more humility and compassion.
And, as such, I like to think DFW would approve of running as a worthy practice of non-distraction.
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Great post Anton! I’m curious if you’re using the ultrasound system for your shin? Are you using cortisone in conjunction with the ultrasound treatment itself? I had seven of these treatments (or some similar ultrasound treatmnt) done to my pes anserine on my right knee at my local PT. Just curious if you’ve started these treatments and if you’re finding them useful? Fingers crossed for you.
love me some DFW. brilliant–always reading him.
One of my favorite passages–from Derivative Sport in Tornado Valley, a short biographical essay of his on tennis among other things:
“assuming your a kid who’s in absurd shape because he spends countless mindless hours jumping rope or running laps backward or doing star-drills between the court’s corners or straight sprints back and forth along the perfect furrows of early beanfields each morning–once the first pain and fatigue of butterflies are got through, if both guys are good enough so that there are few unforced errors to break up the rally, a kind of fugue-state opens up inside you where your concentration telescopes toward a still point and you lose awareness of your limbs and the soft shush of your shoe’s slide…and whatever’s outside the lines of the court, and pretty much all you know then is the bright ball and the…outline of its trail across the billiard green of the court.”
a great description of a feeling we all know, i’m sure.
Tim — Nope, no cortisone with the shin. The Exogen is a super-low wattage application of ultrasound as I understand it (30 milliwatt intensity) that I apply for 20min, twice a day. Who knows, but the shin has been cooperating (somewhat) the past week.
Joe — Man, I could quote DFW all day long. Underlining stuff in his books becomes redundant so quickly as I end up just underlining paragraphs at a time. The man could write about ANYTHING and make it compelling. There’s an entire chapter in The Pale King that is basically just describing a traffic jam, but he just shreds it.
Thanks Tony. There’s a line from one of Henry Miller’s Tropic novels that also seems relevant: ‘The thinking that gets you nowhere takes you everywhere’. As regards writing about running long I think James Shapiro has come closest to capturing it, especially in Meditations from the Breakdown Lane I think.
Tony, great article. If you don’t already, you should read Haruki Murakami – I think you would like what his work ‘says’ on similar themes to the themes in your article, about running and about life.
Thanks for this article. My wife constantly asks how I can run for the lengths of time I do (2 hours) without getting bored. While my level of running is no where near a 100 mile race, this is still a nice job of explaining a big part of the appeal. Kudos to you for the literature references. You are one of the only people I’ve heard of to make a reference to Vonnegut’s Mother Night, never mind DFW.
Positive thoughts and prayers for your continued recovery.
Love, People, Work, Death, God…SQUIRREL!
“I think of nothing and everything. Usually at the same time.”
I love that, because, as my good friend and running partner says, “we solve all the worlds problems on a long run, and then, return, having forgotten all the answers”
Nothing.Everything.- its so true! Yet it is the farthest thing from an activity with which to escape, I think if anything running trails and mountains, regardless of distance, is an invitation to coming back to “real life” better, less stressed and more equipped to deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life.
“we are alone in our connectedness”-
Pastor David Brisbin
Good luck with the magical bone machine and stoked for you in your upcoming races Tony!!
PS- Just saw “Unbreakable” last week, haven’t stopped smiling!!
Great post! I feel exactly the same, not thinking, just listening.
I have absolutely nothing original to add here, so will resort to chiming in.
Wow. Everything… nothing… I think this is the first time someone has expressed what is going on in my head during a long run.
I’m looking forward to reading your book. Oh by the way, you should write a book.
Outstanding observations. I am confident that DFW would agree. He was a tennis wiz, at least in his youth. Reaching that point of mental nothingness is just as essential to return a 100+ mph serve as it is to slog through 10+ hours on the trail.
maybe we run to feel something more than the humdrum of modern society. why else do millions of people sign up for races, its the last grasp of holding onto a primal past where we chased our food. Except now we chase eachother through orange cone laden streets with “Pavlov” ending of fruit and water.
thank you Anton. I think you touched on it with “inherently self-centered”, but to further the point, long distances inherently mean long periods of time…the act of self-listening itself is self-centered, but the length of time is also self-indulgent. In a time when global communication can take place in less than seconds, ultraruns push in the opposite direction towards “deeper, longer”.
Tony,
Thanks for this post. It really nails the listening paradox of nothing and everything at the same time. I have often been puzzled how a new way to look at or a new solution to a work project question or a family discussion will suddenly pop into my head on a long run. Thanks for putting it into words.
cd
Fantastic post, Anton. You brilliantly articulate the inner experience of ultras. I appreciate your insightful link to DFW.
I wrote on a similar theme in an essay, called “One Hundred Miles in Head Land” (published at Ultrarunning.com), about my first hundred miler, the Headlands 100 in Marin, looking at the inner narrative of such an epic run as in some sense parallel with the developmental sequence of a whole lifetime. The article is no longer up at the Ultrarunning website, but if you’re at all curious it is also here:
http://neurotransmission.wordpress.com/
Keep up the great writing and great running.
–Jason Thompson
San Francisco
“Nothing and everything.” You put into words what I never could. Thanks for succintly explaing my addition. I’m going to share your article with my non-running husband.
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This is a great post Anton. I’m not familiar with DFW, but I read the books by Carlos Castaneda. Some people think he was a fake, but he did write some interesting books to say the least. In one of them he touches on how people these days are always distracted by daily life so much that we go to great lenghts to keeps us distracted by all the gizmos, movies, everything. He said that the one way to “stop the world” is to do what he called “not doing”. Running for long periods of time gets you to that point where the mind chatter finally shuts off and you find that you’ve been running for a while and the time just flew by. Reaching the point of shutting off the mind chatter is what keeps me going back to Mt Diablo in the bay area.
On my long run tonight, I’m going to think about the Peyton Manning/Tim Tebow conundrum. Nothing and Everything.