Dear Boys,
Your dad has been jogging quite a fair bit these 2 months, and plans to do this more consistently, this is something I’ve done back in 2019, when I jogged 5km everyday. While a few things have changed since then, you dad got older, (of course!), you boys are also more involved in running. I certainly hope to see more of that!
Running with such regularity will build a certain cadence and rhythm where the body have to adjust to the rigors. Pain will become an acute and constant companion and we need to have a way to manage it mentally. Pain is already a familiar feeling through my years in Aikido.
Pain
I defined this as any form of injuries we sustained, it can be a sprain, badly landed foot, cramps and knocks and falls, In short, the body is broken and not operating in an optimal manner. Pain is existential, you will feel it, there is no wishing it away. Pain is the immediate feedback when you injure yourself.
Hurt
Hurt can be used interchangeably with pain, maybe a little more holistically, and abstract. There is a distinction when we use it to describe certain insult to the ego, which is mainly mental. People usually will say:” I’m hurt by you saying that I am fat.” The fat isn’t painful, the saying isn’t painful, there is no physical harm, the body isn’t broken in anyway. But the utterance is difficult for the mind and psyche to accept the uncomfortable reality.
Sometimes, we do stupid things, and try stunts and gets hurt in the process. We will often wince in a painful expression when we think about our stupidity and while the pain might have been gone, looking stupid will hurt our image of us being suave and competence in what we are doing. This happens a lot in Aikido, where we try some new moves and it didn’t work out, we end up getting injured, and it hurts thinking about it.
Suffering
This sensation happens long after the pain and hurt is gone. Suffering is not entirely necessary, it does nothing but to eat away our healthy psyche and erodes our ability to cope with the hardship that pain and hurt brings along. Suffering weakens us exponentially compared to pain and hurt.
We suffer when we dwells in the pain and hurt, longer than needed. When people says ‘you are fat.’ It takes less than a second to say it, but the word hangs around long after it has been uttered, causing a festering of negative thought and a downward spiral into destructive images of us being a sloth, being lazy, and people laughing at our physique. We start to expand our negative worldview and see us never looking as good as Brad Pitt in Fight Club, or other celebrities. Suffering makes us shrink from our reality and holds us back from coming to our own rescue.
Identifying the imposters
Pain is a constant, hurt can be a reminder. Suffering tells you where you need to love yourself. This is especially true running, it can take hours to run, and there are times where I hit a mental limit, the pain is throbbing, the hurt is bubbling and then I start to suffer. That means I have hit a mental wall, the run has reached an attritional stage, where more mileage will only cause more suffering. So I stop.
There is no point for me to push on, as there is no urgency or life and death situation, it is a run, and the feeling of suffering tells me that I have reached a limit, where I am weaker, so I know at that point, I need to recover. when I am better, I will go back and revisit that point of weakness and I will come back better and stronger.
So there is no need for masochism and that egoistical desire to push our limit and achieve our goals, and then end up critically injured or dying in the process.
Running has taught me to read my limits and to accept my weakness. While I’m getting stronger running, I’m not in any particular hurry to achieve any lofty goals at my own body and mind’s expense.
Aikidology 