The Runner is Not a Lonely Man

I went running on my own for the first time in two years, and I'm not gonna lie, it felt great.  Yes, my legs felt like lead and my chest hurt from non-stop jogging, but the relief that followed the rigorous workout was quite rewarding.  It felt like a miracle drug without the nasty side-effects and addictive substances.  

I wish I had gone running sooner.  Instead, I had wasted countless hours in front of the computer, looking at facebook, watching porn (ahem, that's what guys do in their spare time so...) and being passive like a vegetable.  You see, I am giving up on artificial things as a means of entertainment.  Video games bore me.  Youtube bores me.  Nothing really amuses me on TV unless a really good movie is playing.  But the movies I enjoy are rather antiquated and ambiguous compared to the movies that the majority of us adolescents enjoy.  I have yet to meet a friend my age who has seen Kagemusha or a Bout de Souffle or the Seventh Seal.  Forgive me if I sound a bit pretentious, but I have great difficulty discussing movies with my fellow peers, because none of them know what the hell I'm talking about when I mention these movies in our conversations.

Today, I was lying on my bed reading "Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson".  I had finished reading his journal entries and letters and had just begun to work on his essays.  The first chapter was about nature and its relations with humanity.  Emerson criticized the artificiality of modern life and encouraged handiwork and transcending the material world.  As I read passages that emphasized these points, it struck me how artificial my life had been so far.  Staring at the computer screen for hours, texting away as if there was no tomorrow, doing banal school assignments and labs and other pointless whatnot that our educational system forces down our throats...I got up immediately, put on my sweatshirt, and went running.  

As I ran, I passed countless trees and bushes and branches and acorns and grasses.  I passed rocks and mosses and lichen and fungi and bark and deer and squirrels and dogs.  I also passed people: individuals who also wanted to escape the banalities of their everyday lives and experience something new for a change.  

Nature itself is mundane due to its omnipresence.  Yet, compared to this artificial world of ours, nature is far superior.  In my room, all I hear is the monotonous drone of the computer, the incessant scratching of my pencil, and the artificial crackling of the stereo.  I am all alone.  But when outside running, I am surrounded with life.  I hear birds, I hear trees, I hear water, I hear wind, I hear everything.  This is enough to tell me that I am not alone in this world and that my existence has some value.  

I wish to go running again, only this time I wish to run with friends.  I want it so that my friends, my dear good friends, could also take part in this delightful experience and realize that there is more to life than what society has to offer.