If you want to know the truth, I think it's funny how a good workout can make you call bullshit. Yeah, it's funny the impact a little pain and suffering can have on your peaceful, compassionate, aware mind. If you're running, and you're in decent shape, it'll happen around mile 3. If you're in worse shape, a little earlier. Better shape, a little later. But it happens. It always happens.
"It" is Mount St. Helen's erupting in your legs. "It" is the lava forming in your chest. "It" is that morbidly self-inflicted torture that you put yourself through, for whatever reason. Announcing to the world your penchant for masochism. "It" makes you think, and say, absurd shit like, "No pain, no gain." Bullshit.
What's even worse is that we, as human beings, always seem to seek out pain and suffering. Like we're some abused wife who doesn't feel like her husband really, truly loves her until he's bouncing her ass around the house like his own little private tether ball. So she sets about doing the shit that really pisses him off. Seeking a world-class ass kicking. But this shit isn't new.
As I have mentioned before, I practice Zen meditation most days. Well, as one might expect, I've done some reading about Buddhism. You know, figure out what it was and all that. Well, while reading one book, I came across a discussion about a sect of Buddhists called Jains. They believed that they had all kinds of magical powers, which ranged from being able to fly to understanding all languages to giving sight to the blind. Guess what they attributed their other worldly gifts to? Asceticism. They tortured themselves. They went without food. They went without sex. And they thought this is what gave them their gifts. Pain, suffering and hardship is the key to all. Before you laugh, because I did, they weren't alone.
The Jewish Essenes also believed they had special powers derived from a life of asceticism. They trained themselves through self-torture, embracing and enduring illness, and self-deprivation. Why? Because they believed that they were immortal souls who were baited to come down from heaven to engage in the overindulgence of the material world. And once they had done this, they would lose their special abilities. Amazing, huh?
Well, it was right about here, somewhere around mile three, when the pain and suffering really started to set in. When I really started contemplating the Jains, Essenes and this six mile run that I'd undertaken. It was right about here that I decided I don't have any special powers, and I don't want any. It was right about here that I thought how full of shit it is to seek out pain and suffering. It was right about here that I stopped, turned around and walked to the liquor store to grab some Stoli raspberry. Yeah, I had vastly underestimated what a four-week layoff can do to your running routine. Six miles was just too fucking far. It was right about here that I realized that I'm as capable of bullshit as anyone else.
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