Project 245 Week #5
Faith week
I don’t know if I have ever mentioned my religious beliefs in this blog but you’re going to get a rundown of that right now.
So, I was raised a Hindu. We have a lot of Gods and it is a lot of Sanskrit chants. I can speak the language and I can even provide you chants, if you’re interested. So, for many years I believed in the Hindu God and then I had a bit of a falling out with organized religion. Actually, I could even accept organized religion until people kept their beliefs to themselves, used them to better themselves and didn’t force you to believe in what they believe. I find it particularly annoying when people (especially priests) begin to mutter about things which they interpreted from the scriptures and then begin to state them as facts. It is disingenuous behaviour and often used to isolate people or communities, I do not support that.
So, by definition I am not a religious person. But I am a spiritual person. I do believe in a power bigger than me. The way things happen in life, the way life flows seems a bit too complicated to be coincidental. Because it is a bit tedious to write “power bigger than me” over and over again, I will use the more familiar term: “God”.
I don’t believe the flow of life is the doing of 1 “God” or many (As the Hindus believe). I believe this “God” is an omnipresent omniscient source of energy across the universe. “God” is balancing this flow of energy across the universe, much like a resistor does to the flow of the current. But to me “God” is not just the resistor, but the transistor, capacitor, solder and even the silicon in the circuit board of life. (Did I ever mention I am an electronics engineer?). “God” is everything and everyone at the same time. “God” is making things happen and laughing at us because we are trying to find “meaning” to a life where there is no meaning, there are just meaningful activities. “God” might appear in your life in the form of a friend when you’re depressed or in the form of pain when you become complacent. “God” is the path to self-righteousness and to a life where you treat others with dignity and respect, instead of using people as means to an end.
I just believe that as human beings, if there is a “God”, we do not have the imagination or ability to visualize how they look like.
PS: I don’t think God’s preferred gender pronouns are them/theirs but I don’t think God has a gender or tolerance for gender pronouns.
I feel we need to visualize “God” because as humans we are visual creatures and it gives us comfort when things take shape and we can see them. But we don’t know if “God” is Krishna or Jesus or Allah(or all 3). All renderings we have of God in the real world now are figment’s of somebody’s imagination. They are all artist’s renderings of what they think God looks like. The renderings might as well be AI Generated. My belief is “God” is beyond our mind’s conception and like I said before, “God” can take form of a person or an event. “God” might be the tree you found shade under when you were suffering or the water you found when you were dying of thirst. “God” might arrive in the form of salvation when you feel depressed. Like I said, for me “God” is everything. For me, my parents were “Gods” because they gave birth to me, people who have appeared in my life and guided me to where I am (good or bad) are all “Gods” to me. “God” is watching out for me and taking me through stages in my life where I am becoming a better person. I feel sometimes I tend to fight a lot with “God’s” plans. It’s like being a swimmer who is learning to dive. You think you know what is right for you but the truth is you have it all wrong.
I need to have more faith. I have not been steered wrong. I have had some low moments in life but all of them took me to a better place. It is difficult to know in the moment where life is taking you and then, if you’re like me you fight as if you’re drowning in a quagmire. You invent things to be anxious about and though you’re drilled on the discipline of controlling what you can control, you forget about it. Last week while journaling, I was comparing my life to Andy Dufresne’s life in “The Shawshank Redemption” (yeah, I know i am a bit dramatic). I called myself a prisoner, compared the current zeitgeist of my life to the scene where Dufresne is escaping the prison through the sewer pipeline (spoiler alert!).
And then I told myself to stop being so dramatic. If I am indeed in a prison, it is of my own choosing. It is my lifestyle choices which push me to live the life I am living now. Making changes to the life isn’t going to the magic pill which will solve everything. Changing myself and reducing my needs, to find contentment in what I have and having faith this current phase will pass is crucial. After all, pain is a sign that things are not going well and that they should be changed.
To quote the Upanishads:
When all the desires that surge in the heart
Are renounced, the mortal becomes immortal.
When all the knots that strangle the heart
Are loosened, the mortal becomes immortal,
Here in this very life.
PS: It’s funny but I started reading Eknath Easwaran’s translation of the hindu scriptures called Upanishads this week. I wrote this passage on Monday and started reading the book on Wednesday and it has a remarkable number of similarities to what I just wrote. The Upanishads mention that once the desires cease to exist, the mortal becomes immortal. They mention God in the same energy sense flow of the way. And I had never read this before and yet my subconscious came to the same conclusion at this hollowed text for 3000 years ago. It’s chilling and reaffirming at the same time.
So I am going to experiment this week with having unbridled faith. I will not complain even to ones close to me. I will take things in my stride and if I feel frustrated I will express it as “I am frustrated because….” and then close my sentence. I will not complain like “My colleague is an asshole because..”. I will have almost a religious person’s faith. Everything in my life, whatever is happening is just and correct even if it feels unfair and damaging. I feel a lot more relaxed saying that. I know I have been doing my best and my best will end up yielding the results which are good for me. I will try to combine the results of the experiment at the end of the week and see if they made any sense. But how?
Usually you need to have a goal for each experiment, a “What do I want to achieve?”. My goal from this experiment is to see is that if I feel happier and less anxious. Of course, 1 week is too short a time for habit formation and my default anxiety is bound to catch-up as time progresses. But I have accountability partner in Béné. Everytime I have anger or anxiety coming up, I will put it to “God’s greater plan” and blame it on the wind. Let’s see if things are better at the end of this week.
I did have bit of moment on Tuesday night when I woke up at night filled with terror and self-doubt. But I reminded myself that all is part of the great plan, I need to have faith that life is guiding me in the right direction and went back to bed.
Spring and Gratitude
I think I have made it abundantly clear that I am not a winter person. I like the sun and winter days are beautiful but they are too short. Yes, I need to accept it but it is not about that. With spring comes brightness, with spring comes life. Little by little, everything begins to resume functioning. The trees become greener, the flowers blossom and the air gets warmer. The sun begins to gain intensity but during the spring, it is just the right amount, you know? Especially in the morning, it feels so good. I was running this morning and absorbing the sunlight, I felt so grateful for everything that I have, I am and I can be. I felt so grateful for being in Lausanne and be by my Lac Leman. I am grateful to be surrounded by the people by the lake and the mountains which look upon us. I am grateful for my life and what it has taught me, what it has given me and what possibilities it offers to me. I am eternally grateful because I never imagined my life to arrive at this point.
I will add a few more pictures of flowers and I hope they bring you the same joy as they bring me.
In terms of training this week, I am trying to push through another big week. The goal is to get 2/3 of them in a row and then a week/two with lower mileage but more intensity and then taper. I will do a proper 3 week taper because I do feel smashed. I was thinking while lacing my shoes for a 2nd run on Tuesday, if non-runners think us runners have it easy. Most non-runners I know complain about it being too painful or difficult to head out of the door. The funny thing is serious runners have the same difficulties but we just don’t care as much. I had run 10 miles in the AM, then gone for a 3 hour meeting, come home and then straight out of the door for another 6 miles. I know I could’ve gone in the evening but my motivation in the evening would’ve been even lower and even though it was a drag to put on the shoes, walk down 5 floors and run knowing I will have to climb 150 meters again, I also didn’t care. I am a vessel and the process is the sea. I float upon it and I do what I need to do.
There’s also magical runs like I had last weekend on Sunday after the long run. So, on Saturday I had run all the way to Rolle, 20 miles from home and met Béné at a restaurant for a burger. Of course, finishing my run and eating within 30 minutes, with all the calories being ingested on time might’ve had something to do with it but on Sunday, I felt like I could’ve run forever. I wasn’t running very fast but I felt incredible. I told Béné that every so often runners have this day, most days suck or are boring, they are about going through the grind but then magically one day you feel invincible. Of course that feeling disappears and I had my share of shitty runs this week like Tuesday’s double and Wednesday’s “marathon pace session”. I ran at a pace which is supposed to be marathon pace for me but I haven’t recovered from my cough (and the hypochondriac in me thinks it is tuberculosis even though the reasonable part of me knows that high mileage is wearing my immune system thin). So while physically that pace felt easy, cardiovascularly it felt miserable. And I started this morning (Thursday) thinking where is that magical turnaround point which high mileage runners find?
So, about this turnaround point and a little note on running high mileage. It’s not as hard as you think it is. Yes, the numbers might seem big and of course, it takes getting used to and slowly building towards it and not everyone is made for it. When you run high mileage, there’s a cumulative sense of fatigue because for example if you run 100 miles a week, you average 14.5 miles a day, which is roughly over a half marathon every day. If you fit in a long run, you can get by with a single “small” day of 10 miles. Yeah, you see? I am calling a 16.09k run a “small” run which it really isn’t and it doesn’t feel small at the beginning. Until it does. There comes this turnaround point when your body gets used to the heavy legs, it gets used to the high mileage and your brain lets go. It is amazing when that happens because all of a sudden your legs go from feeling like stones to feeling like pogo sticks. It is kind of what happened to me this morning actually. My heart rate felt a lot less laboured for an effort which was faster than my previous efforts, I was moving better and with better cadence. Then in the afternoon I still felt tired but there was this view:
So yeah, life is good.
Finishing this week’s blog with a couple more photos and a note that “faith week” was definitely a success. Trusting things will work out the way they need to takes the stress out of life.
Also btw, I watched Dune 2, really good movie. And can’t believe I am saying that but it is better than the book (actually a fair bit of changes compared to the book).
