The runner’s reflections-Searching for a meaning in‘leaving’ … not just living.

So, I got out running this time a half marathon, it usually takes me around 2hrs on a relaxed run and around 1hr 40min on a good push. Today I needed to make it more relaxed to utilise the time for reflection. For the more I want to reflect the longer I make the run. Never underestimate the power of solitude.??

I started reflecting on the concept of leaving. We humans have a proclivity of associating the concept of leaving is associated with negative emotions. What if there are positives in leaving.??

I thought, I enjoy a good run and fresh air, however I would not have achieved this euphoric and cathartic feeling I get outside if I did not leave the comfort of the house. For it is in the leaving that we discover ourselves, grow and expand.?

Of course, I wasn’t going to naively accept this simplistic view. I thought about relationships either personal or business relationships, if you had a well reciprocated relationship, leaving is going to be associated with pensive sadness and nostalgia at least that’s normal.?

Like Kubler-Ross says in her famous publication On Death and Dying...you should feel these different emotions until you eventually get to acceptance. Does acceptance not mean defeat then, why does it feel like going against the grain, against the very philosophy that we are taught from young age … to “just go for it” and not “to just leave it.”?

I couldn’t help but continue to reflect at time chuckling to myself, I was consciously looking for any story that I could link to leaving, now that I was in a state of flow. Suddenly I thought about biblical stories. I remembered in the book of Genesis, Abraham was told by God to leave his country, his father’s household and all he knew...surely if God recommended leaving there must be a positive to it, I thought.?

The same thing?in the book of Exodus, God instructed Moses to lead the Israelites and leave Egypt to the promised land. Of Course, the process was not straight forward and the journey to the promised land was not full of roses, it was filled with misery, temptation, hunger and all sorts. Egypt was the wilderness, but one can easily think it was a case of ‘out of the wilderness into new wildernesses for that’s what the 40 years through the wilderness was like. However, that transition was about making the valley of trouble a door of hope! It is symbolic that we have to go through suffering to transcend, grow and find ourselves, in the process of leaving we experience?nostalgia and melancholy, they are the price we pay for leaving but that is the transformation it is “the right of passage” that how we find meaning and the purpose of life.?

I personally find it similar to the process that astronauts go through during orbital re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. On leaving orbit shuttles faced intense temperatures of about 3000 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1649 degrees Celsius). They have to endure that to get back to mother earth. ?

One can go as far as childbirth, the infant must go through the same process to separate from mother and start their own life, a process that Carl Jung referred to as individuation. Without the infant ‘leaving’ mother’s womb they are unlikely to develop their individual being.?

While leaving is painful, we must find joy in leaving, we must celebrate leaving for it is in leaving that we reach new horizons and new company. It is in leaving that we ‘leave’ behind the self-defeating trenches we dug, self-built prisons that we often see as our security.??

I am not a big fan of Freudian theory, but I have no choice …. Imagine if we couldn’t leave our Oedipus complex (of course there are people who require help to resolve it) way into adulthood. The same problem dealing with masochists... they have a desire to be miserable however to be happy as Scott Peck says in The Road Less Travelled and Beyond (a good book by the way) ‘they have to learn ways to be happy’ which means leaving the misery behind.?

Of course, not everyone wants to leave especially if you have overinvested in the current, leaving means losing and may involve a lot of bargaining to actually leave. (I don’t have a certain leader of the political party in mind struggling to leave the newly refurbished Flat at 10 Downing Street).?

That’s why I ‘Leave’ the house to go for a run, especially long runs because I can engage my mind in these thoughts and while I am at it, I am getting fit, I forget about my painful plantar fasciitis.??

Perhaps one day I can use these same justifications should I need to leave my job, who knows! It will all make sense soon!?

Perhaps someone can use these thoughts should they consider leaving any specific scenario in life.?

It’s Keswisk Half Marathon this weekend ... who knows what will happen! Stay Blessed.?