No Fear

“I think some runners just like the pain,” said Katy. We were on our bikes, heading up Martin Luther King Drive in Philadelphia, almost at the Falls Bridge. It’s a pretty piece of parkland, a sylvan bubble just feet from an expressway and a railroad line. You can’t see either one at this point, because of the trees. And then there are the fields of grass and, on the right, the river with its rowers.

Not a bad place to be skewered by a very honest young woman who knows how to speak her mind with diplomatic indirection. I hadn’t been able to go running for a while because of an injury I had basically inflicted on myself. Running injuries are almost always overuse injuries, and I’m an artist at joking about obsessive-compulsive disorder and simple fanaticism. But I’d never looked myself in the mirror while shaving and said, “I like pain.”

I’d helped Katy train for her first two marathons. In the beginning, I had felt faster, and I had been wiser – at least about preparing for a marathon. The faster thing changed early, when she decided I’d be okay with it. And now the tide had shifted in the wisdom river.

As children we’re taught to fear pain. It’s an easy lesson. After all, pain hurts. But I prefer to think of pain as a language. The body has things to tell us. If we listen, we will learn. It’s hard to listen to something you fear. You’re too busy running away.

I remember, I think it was my second marathon, in 2002. I was in mile 26, coming down Kelly Drive past Lloyd Hall. The finish line was just up a slight rise and around a curve, in front of the Art Museum. And I remember feeling that my lungs were very tired from all the breathing they had been doing. It wasn’t really pain, more just a sensation that the surface fabric, down inside my lungs, had been worn down by all that air. I’ve never had that sensation since, possibly because of better training. And I think it’s also true that, in mile 26 of a marathon, the definition of pain has shifted a bit.

What did this sensation tell me? It told me I was okay. It told me I was very tired. And it told me to do more long runs next time.

The idea of liking pain takes you to some very strange places – self-flagellation in the Christian church, and masochism for the psychologically inclined. None of this works for me. It would help if people talked about this more, with a little more depth than, “Boy, that really hurt.”

I do have certain pains that are old friends. There’s one in my right knee. It’s from an old injury. Every once in a while it just shows up for a visit. Doesn’t mean any harm. Goes away after a while.

So I have some old friends, and I do seem to make new acquaintances on a fairly regular basis. But do I like pain? I don’t know. But I do know that I don’t fear it. When it shows up, I don’t run away. I listen.

A Cure for Anger

A few days ago I was running my eleventh marathon, and I did something I’d never done before: I dropped out. It was a gradual decision. Early on I noticed a certain, highly uncharacteristic, listlessness, and then I started coughing, and feeling short of breath, and then a bit light-headed, and it occurred to me that I still had the cold I thought I’d shaken off a week previously. As I passed the 14-mile mark I decided it wasn’t worth it, and I stopped.

I wasn’t in a lot of pain, but running has taught me that pain is a language, and sometimes the messages spoken softly are the ones you need to listen to most carefully.

You might think I’d be upset about my first DNF (Did Not Finish), but I wasn’t. A few years ago I was reading Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, and I came across this line: “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” My son thinks this is very Buddhist, and I’m inclined to agree.

I confess I’d never given much thought to the distinction between pain and suffering. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the guy to be providing exact definitions of terms that clearly mean a lot of different things to different people. But here are some thoughts that have worked for me. I see suffering as a psychological reaction to pain. That’s why suffering is optional. With pain, you don’t get to choose: It just shows up.

I hasten to add that pain can be physical or mental. Years ago the grandmother of a friend said this to me about children: “When they’re little they tread on your toes; when they’re bigger they tread on your heart.” And in both cases, it seems to me, there is pain.

But is there suffering? Well that’s up to you, or, in the case of my first DNF, it was up to me. I decided not to suffer. I’ve been doing that a lot since I read Murakami’s book. It feels good. There’s a freedom and a clarity to not suffering. Also it allows you to focus on dealing with the pain.

There is a downside, though. Suffering clearly buys you quite a lot in America today. First of all, it makes you a victim. And everybody in America seems to want to be a victim. Even billionaire hedge fund managers feel free to announce that they’re victims. It turns out that people like me think the taxes hedge fund managers pay are too low. So I’m the oppressor, and they’re the victims.

And suffering gives you something else – anger. Which you are free to hurl at your oppressor whenever and wherever you choose.

I remember, during the last World Cup, watching soccer players unaccountably drop to the ground and start writhing as if in pain. This is apparently, on the world stage, how you try to convince an official that a foul has been committed.

It seems we’re a lot like that now. You might almost call suffering a national addiction.

I prefer the baseball player who gets hit with a pitch and trots nonchalantly to first base. Getting hit by a thrown baseball hurts quite a lot – I know this. I also know that that baseball player is not going to rub his arm while he’s standing at first base. Not gonna happen.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about lowering the level of vituperation in our public discourse. We all need to calm down and be less angry, we’re told by a variety of self-appointed hall monitors. But how exactly are we supposed to do that? Once you’re a victim, once you’re suffering, anger is pretty much inevitable.

Here’s my thought. Anger proceeds from suffering. Strong link, pretty much unbreakable in my opinion. Suffering proceeds from pain. It’s a psychological reaction, remember? And, I think, a pretty weak link. Cut that link, and nip the whole victim syndrome in the bud.

If you want to. It’s up to you.

So how do you do it? How do you slay the suffering monster? I suspect that each one of us is different. I’ve found laughter is very useful, and I’m planning to do a lot more of it in the coming months. And maybe I’ll enter another marathon.