When he found out I had once spent almost 15 hours running a
50 mile trail ultra, my step father immediately asked what I did while running.
What he really wanted to know was what I thought about. For him, as for so many
people, thinking is something that happens outside, or at least, along side experience.
One of the things
I like best about running is that thinking connects to experience. The more I
run, the more direct the connection.
Most of us have had this experience: we finish a run and
look back over the songs on our Pandora account, looking for the artist who
sang this or that particular song. Looking back over the list we realize we didn’t
hear most of the songs that had been playing. I sometimes find myself thinking,
“That song? I love that song. I don’t even remember it.” What we’ve done is
entered into a space where thought and experience are direct, no longer
mediated. Some call this a meditative state.
Sometimes, when I enter that space I find insights into
problems that I have been wrestling with for months. Suddenly, I see the
solution. Sometimes I find insightsI didn't even know I was looking for. They seem to
come out of nowhere, even though I know they’ve been bubbling below the surface
for a while
.
Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about The Apology of Socrates and its possible
intersection with pragmatism. The other day while running silent, (no music, not
books on tape), it suddenly occurred to me that Socrates had been accused of
believing in strange gods and leading the youth astray. In other words, he wasn’t
teaching the orthodox line in Sunday School.
A few years before, I would have thought it barbaric, even
medieval to think that someone could be condemned to death for the wrong
theology. The Inquisition was a think of the past. That was before Al Queda and
the Westboro Baptist Church.
Things haven’t changed as much as we’d like.
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