Some Wisdom
I haven’t b*tched much about my injury which has rendered me as a completely useless runner for the last 6 months. I went through the 5 stages of grief and after finding acceptance, believe it or not, I became enlightened.
Turns out when you have the correct people in your life, when you are not surrounded by parasites, read a lot of books and stop fretting over irrelevant details, life is pretty cool. Ok, not really. Life is still life. I’ll explain.
In 2013, I had developed a slight knee pain because I used to walk up and down 22 floors of my office building, twice a day in formal shoes. I had whined and cried about that. Coming from the land of bollywood, drama is an inherent part of my genes. In 2016, I did Ultraman and before that I was injured too and man, I was depressed. Life seemed to this kafkaesque situation where things just could not go correct for our protagonist. And then I moved out. And went through life on my own. I dealt with shitty people, met amazing people, had toxic relationships, got rid of those toxic relationships and got into some wonderful relationships and because I was so green at the start,I just felt everything was much harder than it really was. I mean, I slept hungry for a couple of days, compared to that my current pain in the ass is almost pleasing. I was constantly depressed, suicidal and really lonely. I had 99 problems. Now I have 1 problem, maybe 2. And ok, those were 99 major problems. This one is almost “fun”.
I learnt a lot over the last 6 months with this pain in my ass. I couldn’t run. Like literally, I could not run for 3 months. And then I could for a brief period but I cannot do it again because it hurts when I run. The thing is, I used to think I do not define myself and my life with running but because for the rest of my life, I really didn’t have much to look forward to. Running was that one thing I was really good at and I was afraid to lose it. Now I have lost it, for 6 months. And I am still me. Nothing has changed about me. The people who cared about me still care about me. I found my real friends. Who knew a pain in the ass could weed out assholes?
The truth is life is not deep. You know, people make such a big deal out of their Strava activity and whatever crap they do. I used to as well. But here’s the thing. Life is simple. Life is shallow. Life has not magic formula. If you are a good person, you go through life finding small miracles. If you are a bad person, you end up like Hitler. And even then, there are not too many “bad people” on Earth. Everyone is a little bit a jerk. Everyone is also sweet. Some more than others but it balances out. Life is not a drama, it is not Breaking Bad or Downton Abbey or The Wire(I just started watching it, WHAT A SHOW!). Life is a zero sum activity. You do mostly good things, sometimes you behave like a jerk, sometimes you have wonderful things happen to you and sometimes you get a little bit of a pain in the ass. You know, normal stuff. It is all NORMAL. It is very normal to have bad patches in life. It is very normal to have good patches in life. There is no reason to feel threatened or insecure or saddened by these patches. Because in the equation of life, despite all these variables there is a constant called time. And time passes and at t=X your life is great and t=Y it might be shit and wherever you t ends you die.
When you die, most of what you do is forgotten. Until you are Napoleon. Or Hitler. Or Ray Charles. Then you are remembered for a longer time. But if you are reading my blog, then chances are you are pretty mediocre much like me and so you won’t be remembered for too long after you’re dead. This hope you have is what makes you complain that you had more headwind on your training run or whatever bullshit excuse you make on your Strava activity. I have this one guy, man, all he does is f*cking complain. If something goes right, he complains that it didn’t go right enough. And God forbid something goes wrong. AND IT IS ABOUT RUNNING. WHICH DOESN’T MATTER. BECAUSE IT IS A HOBBY. AND A HOBBY YOU CHOSE. AND NOBODY GIVES A F*CK. (Sidenote: I muted half these c*nts on Strava. I am not for ideological echo chambers but some of these people just rub me off the wrong way. And I am not sorry for calling them c*nts.)
Anyways, we all die and nothing we do really matters and eventually everything will be forgotten and the sun would explode and nothing, even the stuff Hitler and Ray Charles did would be forgotten. So why are you so sad right now? You know that you get only one life, right?(contrary to what religion says). And you know that whatever you do wouldn’t matter. I am not saying you should go rob a bank because then you end up ruining most of what’s left of your life. But still, life is short and not that deep. It mostly requires you to be a good person, do stuff with honesty and knowing that sometimes life just sucks. As long as you remember that, you will never be carried away whether life is going great or miserable. And so you will be able to enjoy yourself a little everyday, either because life is going great or because this misery will soon end.
Just smile. It’s not too bad.
