The Girl Who Ran with Amazing Grace

I saw her about three years back, a few months before the pandemic became a thing. It was on two occasions, spaced within a week, at my neighborhood park. After that, I never got to catch even a fleeting glimpse of her supple, graceful persona.

She is no Flo-Jo or PT Usha, but to me she remains one of the most inspiring ‘track-and-field’ athletes ever.

And come to think of it: I was reminded of her most recently while working on my third book, which is about meditation.?

“What has achieving excellence in running got to do with attaining stillness in meditation,” you ask?

Contrary to that flawed first impression, a lot. Let me describe her and what makes the memory of her movement an abiding instance of inspiration, and you’ll probably know.

It happened when I was struggling with my own awkward attempt to run a few hundred feet after many, many years. While I had been keeping a healthy regimen of walking and meditation for quite some time, somehow I stayed away from running. And the reason I was attempting to run again was to further strengthen my knees that had become weaker ever since diabetes discovered me.

So, just as I was kind of giving up on the run (for the time being, I told myself), this girl in her late teens flows past me—prompting me to turn my head and take a second look.

Flow, mind you, not run, is the appropriate word here even though she was obviously running. And the same word—flow—comes up whenever my mind tries to retrieve the moving image of her smooth nimbleness from the Hippocampus.

The human brain is such an astonishing piece of equipment and works in (often) pleasantly surprising ways, isn’t it? The very mention of “flow” brings up Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book of the same name. Do you know how Mihaly has described flow??

“A state of concentration so focused that it amounts to complete absorption in an activity and results in the achievement of a perfect state of happiness.”

Serendipity, we love you.

I know I don’t need to write another word of explanation after this, but I will—just a few :)

When I took the second, and third, and fourth look at the girl running along the boundary of the park, I was stopped in my tracks by what I saw and felt.

She was running with such graceful movements, her hands and legs swaying in perfect rhythm, that Mihaly could’ve been looking at her when describing flow.

The girl was probably preparing for some running competition but her serene face was completely absorbed in the here-and-now moment. The expression on her face was beyond happiness.

I could barely run for one side of the boundary and here she was, doing five full rounds of the park with an ease and joy that instantly made her an icon of motivation for me.

If I may dare say, she was in some sort of divine flow.

Not much different from the flow you feel when absorbed in meditation.

I am grateful for having had the opportunity to feel inspired by her amazing grace. And happy that the inspiration is a continuing, ongoing phenomenon.