Embracing Pain: A Runner's Reflection
Finding Meaning and Growth in Discomfort
Pain. I am reminded of this word as my right hand is hurting. I can’t even type optimally right now.
You see, yesterday night I was racing through Montjuic of Barcelona, with my feet stomping the sidewalk next to the road in a rhythm. Thoughts wandering. Right turn. Downhill. I could imagine street racers drifting down the tōge (mountain pass) in those tight corners like in Initial D or Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift. The beat is picking up, faster and faster. Until everything halts to a slow-motion. Huh? I see my point of view turning down toward the very pavement I was running on. My hands and arms are reaching out in front of me. Closing the distance toward the road. It looks…rough. *CRASH* Next thing I know, I was lying on the rocky pavement, processing what just happened. I turned, sat up, and looked at my hands. Dirt and pebbles stabbing my flesh, it’s bleeding. I cry out in agony.
I sat there for a while, looking at my hands, rocking back and forth because of the pain. I see an old couple walking by. As they pass, the old woman turned her head repeatedly, looking at me while continuing walking. Not that I can expect them to ask whether I am okay, I thought.
Soon after I picked myself up. 2 kilometers in. Now that’s no way to end a run, is it? Five kilometers is the de facto minimum of my every run. So I resumed running, with my hands awkwardly swaying in the air, with my right thumb and index finger joining in a circle for some reason - well, okay then👌. I thought about just going home via metro or bus. But my public transport card ain’t working at the moment due to some stupid error, and paying extra because of that didn’t feel right to me. Yeah, I’m that kind of guy. I’d rather go the extra mile…haha, get it?
But in all seriousness, somehow it felt…good. To take in the pain and confront it. To move despite of it. Right knee twitching, hands burning. Perhaps it’s the adrenalin, but I felt like going faster, to break the limits, to storm and pierce the air in front of me. Before I knew it I was close to home, stopping short of eight kilometers in front of the apartment entrance door.
So, what’s the point to all of this? That I am a masochist? No, not exactly.
I am thinking as I am writing, but when it comes to ‘pain’ or ‘suffering’, I am reminded of a book I read years ago: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. It’s a famous book, and it’s an excellent one.
Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997), in summary, was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor, best known for his book "Man's Search for Meaning," which chronicles his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II and explores the human capacity for finding meaning in life, even in the most extreme circumstances.Although I read many great books in the past and forgot the details of most of them - as one does - I still remember the core concepts or the ways they made me feel. With this one I sensed that it was a very profound book, with many deep quotes to appreciate, including those about suffering.
“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer”, Frankl whispered into my ears while I was running past the street lamps.
“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
And so I chose. That I was to carry on. That suffering was an inevitable part of life, yet how I respond to it is entirely my decision to make.
Zooming out, what is it that makes me want to continue? What is my ‘why’ in life? It is not so easy to say but I have a vague sense of it. And this answer becomes less blurry, sharper, as time passes by. The more experiences I gather. As I reflect on, learn about and work on my values, relationships, and the things I enjoy doing. Your concrete ‘purpose in life’ may not come to you straight away, but trust that the dots will connect at some point. Just keep going, keep exploring. Perhaps the dots have already been connecting, as someone commented recently.
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
While you are going on this very personal journey with your own unique path, don’t lose yourself, becoming possessed by the end goal. Often, when people chase something - like money, happiness or love - for the sake of it or with obsession, they don’t quite seem to obtain it. That is all to say, focus on the present, look inward, work on yourself and do what is meaningful to you.
Or as Frankl puts it: “Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”
Favorite Things
Tool - Arc Browser. I’ve been following Arc by The Browser Company for a while. If you haven’t heard of it yet, it’s this new(er) fancy browser that tries to challenge the status quo of the browsing world. I tried it out back in 2022 when I was temporarily using a MacBook for the startup I was working at. Their fresh approach and design was hooking, not gonna lie. Now that the Windows beta is out (finally!) I’m testing it out, pretty good so far.
Resource - Spanish After Hours. For everyone out there learning Spanish, look no further than this YouTube channel by Laura. I accidentally discovered her, and I think I might be in love haha. Anyways, the learning philosophy here is “comprehensible input” which I first learned about through a friend when he told me about the platform called “Dreaming Spanish”.