The Joy Of Suffering

"If you suffer, thank God! -- it is a sure sign that you are alive."
- Elbert Hubbard

Yesterday I went out for a 16 miler with my friend, Jim. I'd felt pretty much recovered from my 50 mile run last weekend, so I told Jim that I would go out with him for 16 miles as part of his Freescale marathon preparation. It was to be his longest run ever, although not by much. For me it would be a different challenge since I knew I couldn't be fully recovered yet from last weekend.

The run started off OK, except that my left achilles was hurting. I had faith that the pain would subside, so as usual I ran through it. I was right that the pain would subside, but I had no idea what was coming next. It began small, just a slight discomfort on the outside arch of my left foot. We got off of the roads and onto a trail, and the pain eased. But soon we were forced off of the trail again and this time the pain got much worse. Soon I couldn't run at all. I'm not exxagerating at all when I say that I could barely walk. My original intentions were to support my friend on his run, now I was just hoping not to slow him down. So I told him to go off and finish his run alone, and I would see him back at his house. I was 3 miles away from his place, and my car. So I started limping home.

An hour later, and still a half mile from my car, I began wondering why I was doing this. Not why I was struggling through this today, but why do I put myself in the position to suffer such great pain when I could easily be at home in bed, or at least sitting at home with my wife and watching SportsCenter.

It's something I come to think about a lot on long runs, especially when physical pains linger and mental challenges mount. It's a question that I need to answer before I can continue this journey.

We're conditioned at an early age that happiness is good, while suffering is bad. Physical pleasures are to be strived for and rewarded, while pain is to be avoided. But why is that?

The person we become is a result of our experiences in life. Our consciousness is a combination of the joyful experiences as well as our sufferings. To avoid either one of these facets of our development is to avoid gaining true consciousness. Suffering breeds experiences that nothing else can replace. It is as essential as any other factor in our development. It teaches temperance, patience, appreciation, modesty and humility. These are attributes of my character that have never been very strong, so perhaps that's why this is so important to me. Think about these attributes... Every one of them is an enviable characteristic, and everyone of them is enhanced through suffering. I hope to have time to come back to this soon and explain my reasoning, but not tonight.

I'll touch on one of them now, appreciation. Just as a trust-fund baby will never be as rich as a man who saved every dime until his retirement, a man who never feels pain can never experience the true physical pleasures in life.

When I get home after a long day at work and a tough workout, I am physically and mentally drained. My body aches and my mind is exhausted. But I shower and lay down in bed and the greatest sensation rushes through me because I have tasted the sour, and now I get to savor the sweet.

So this is why I run, why I run farther than most people think I should, through injury, poor weather, over hills and rocky terrain. It is not a quest for suffering, rather a quest for consicousness. My goal is not to find suffering, nor to avoid it. It is to experience life, whatever that may be.