Running: The Greatest Waste Of Time
When the great Israeli movement coach, Ido Portal, was asked why he spends so much time practicing his various movement disciplines, he replied: “because it’s a great way to waste time”.
There is no ‘Theory of Everything’, despite what Stephen Hawking and various other philosophers, theoretical physicists, artists and writers have attempted to find throughout centuries of human experiment and thought.
Perhaps we will never fully realise the ‘reason’ we were put here on this Earth; why human beings and the universe evolved in the way we did, and what we ‘should’ fundamentally be doing with our time.
Maybe there is indeed simply no reason whatsoever; and until a legitimate ‘all encompassing’ truth is found then it’s hard to argue with those great time wasters out there.
If there is seemingly no clear reason to exist, no endpoint to reach, no mountain to climb, then indeed why not just ‘waste time’ while we’re here?
Ironically, many of the self-proclaimed ‘time-wasters’ I’ve come across in my life so far have been some of the most productive, interesting and talented people I’ve ever met. After all, not taking oneself too seriously is a rather effective skill to learn; for the tension and stress caused by ‘overly important’ pursuits, it seems, almost always works against us in the long run.
I remember the jealousy I once felt towards another footballer (Isaac) I played with in my teenage years when, upon being invited to join the UK National Football trials, replied that he enjoyed the idea of going on holiday with his family more instead. A handful of us went and had a torrid time being shouted at, spied upon whilst eating and sleeping alone in single bedrooms away from our family and friends.
Isaac, of course, did not make the team, and yet neither did the rest of us; but he surely had had a better week than we did!
I would argue that Running, if nothing else, is a perfect way of wasting time.
It could even be the greatest - as I hope this blog over time will show - for it is free of charge, requires little (or nothing at all) in the way of clothing, equipment and technology, is the most simple form of exercise regarding skill/technique, can be done on (almost) any terrain and in (almost) any environment and can be anything from a social meet, a cultural exchange, a religious/spiritual ritual, a serious competition, an exploration of nature and the great outdoors, a means of transport, a way of feeling and looking healthier, a paid profession, an expression of love, anger, frustration, freedom, escape, sincerity, sadness or joy, and even a celebration of simply having been born with legs in the first place!
We must do something with ourselves during the years we’re afforded on this Earth, and so I suspect that there may well be somewhat ‘better’ ways to spend time than others.
Assuming that our ‘empty’ or ‘available’ time is indeed an opportunity to act in ways that are enjoyable and fulfilling, then those actions that allow for even more available time must therefore, in the long term, be the most fulfilling of all!
We don’t run because we’re bored; we’re bored because we run
Some things seem to take longer than others. I’m sure you’ve sat down to watch your favourite sitcom and, before you know it, 5 episodes have passed and you were strangely none the wiser.
Likewise, anyone who has tried to meditate, or run a marathon, will know just how long each second, each minute, each hour seems to take. This ‘slowing down’ of time (or ‘creating boredom’) is truly a remarkable characteristic of the human consciousness; that ‘with awareness comes attention, and with attention comes deeper layers of experience’.
Put simply, the more fully engaged one is with a singular activity, and the more simple and ‘stripped back’ that activity is, the more thoroughly – and in turn slowly – that Time is experienced.
It is not easy to retain such focus, and certainly not for long, yet that experience of emptiness, of spaciousness in one’s body and mind, and of ‘Time to be somehow filled’ is felt in every Japanese Zen Haiku, heard in every timeless piece of classical music, is touched in every detailed work of art and equally seen in the memoirs and stories of great distance runners, past and present.
Things that create ‘boredom’ invite new possibilities, new ideas, new journeys and new reasons to exist. And nothing creates boredom like running does.
In this sense, the more one runs the more one finds the energy, the space and the Time to run.
And the more one runs, the more one finds the Time for other things; for family, for friends, for reading, for writing, for music, for rest.
The ‘Wasting Time’ approach is therefore rather simple: find the best ways you can to waste Time, and the more Time you’ll have to waste!
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