Running Out of Time

I posted earlier this week about feeling out of sync and distracted and unproductive. I have also experienced more migraine events than usual in the last 2 months, it occurred to me last week that I had not been running. So, I finally got around to going out for a run. I took off for 5 miles and came back feeling like a new person. I cannot overstate the strength of the link between exercise and my power to focus. There is a unique thing that happens when one can combine meditative rhythm with natural, enjoyable alterations to brain chemisty.
There is a point in my run, usually around two and a half or three miles where all other things begin to disappear. For me it matters not whether its a straight and flat road-run or a narrow, hilly, muscular trail. So long as I am outdoors and moving forward, feeling the ground disappear off the toes of my shoes, I will discover a unique freedom and clarity of mind. When I reach this state there are no stressors, not on my joints, not on my mind. There is a place about ten feet in front of me where I know my body will be very shortly and there is the breath in my lungs. Beyond that my mind will waft from thought to thought, into unthought and back. At times I find I can think about what are otherwise very most difficult choices I face without any of their usual weight. Three miles into my run I begin to see my world as a kind of enlightened spectator. I still hold all the context, but now I gain a special kind of separation that does not limit the depth of my investment, only its ability to blind me.
Running convinces me of the virtue and the attainability of living simply. But simultaneously, it invigorates the creative process which clammors to put more work, and learning before me. Perhaps my greatest lesson from my time spent on the trail is that simplicity and fullness are never mutually exclusive. Even greater than that, simple fullness is downright acheivable. When my run turns the corner from enjoyable physical challenge to psychological and metaphysical exercise, time begins to disappear. Not in an amnestic way but where I feel I could keep floating along on my legs with this lightness of mind for the entire day. In this mental place of no-time it becomes possible to play unabashedly. To play physically, and play with ideas. When I’ve run out of time, there are no pressures, no worries, no concerns, and the world is simple, and my heart is full.