joy and train

This morning I feel a bit like a train has run over me. I can't really point to a specific locus of pain, just overall feel wrong, tired, depressed, and weak.

But I remembered something about the race on Saturday that has made me a little more reflective about my current physical state. As I often try to do, I took a few moments during the slowest portion of the race up the final 15 mile section toward Snowbasin, to turn back and look down at Pineview Reservoir and take in the beauty of the fall scenery. This is an area that hasn't yet been overbuilt, although it has seen a lot of growth lately. The water shone in the bright afternoon light and just the sense of how far I had gone and how high I was overcame me with a feeling of awe. I think Kant calls this "Beauty" in a philosophical sense, the experience of seeing what is beyond oneself, whether or not one is religious.

And in addition to that, I was reminded as I struggled of all the people who cannot do what I am blessed to be able to do. Running a marathon is a crazy thing to do, in the sense that the human body is just not designed to do it. Your pain sensors have to be constantly ignored in order for you to do the training and then the race itself. Athletes do marathons, and I have never considered myself an athlete. I'm just a regular person who does crazy stuff for a reason that no one (including me) understands. But I am a lucky crazy person. Though the pain in my legs was there, reminding me that I am mortal, I could keep going. I'm not in a wheelchair. I don't struggle for every breath. I'm not lying in a hospital bed with a terminal diagnosis. I'm not in a situation where I have to use every bit of energy to survive. I am not in a country where women are treated as cattle.

When I got home from the race, 15 was watching The Princess Bride with her friends before we left for dinner, and I think I caught a glimpse of Wesley telling Buttercup--life is pain. Yes, life is pain. Pain means that I am alive. The pain of this race was pain of my own choosing, but it meant that my legs work, that they continue to take me up and down hills, that the world is on its axis, that there will be better days ahead.