Today, I have a treat for you. An audible injection of inspiration. A well tested vaccine against the Ouroboros of Anhedonia.
For today we’re going to hear from The Doctor.
No, no, no..not the duel-hearted alien from the Planet Gallifrey, located in the constellation of Kasterborous, at galactic coordinates 10-0-11-00:02 from Galactic Zero Centre.
There’s another doctor who has inspired me over the years.
Someone who, like me, wasn’t perfect…someone who was always in a mode of learning, suffering, triumphing, and then suffering again and again.
He isn’t very well know to much of the world, but if you’re a runner you might have heard of him…and if you’ve been a listener of this podcast, you probably know him better than most.
Either way, he’s someone you should get to know.
It’s no exaggeration for me to say that THIS doctor is the inspiration for Phedippidations, and has been an inspiration for my life. This Doctor helped me when I needed him, and he continues to help me today.
In the early 1980’s George Sheehan would give an oration to a packed auditorium at the Health and Fitness Expo a day before the Boston Marathon. What you’re about to hear is one of those speeches.
The topic of his talk was the “Theology of Running” and as we get ever closer to Easter Bunny Day and the Boston Marathon, it makes sense to consider theologically secular verbal essay from one of the greatest running philosophers of our time.
This is Doctor George Sheehan.
There’s alot to unravel here.
So much so, that I’m going to leave it to you to ponder, contemplate and translate what has been said, into your own life.
I do, however, want to touch on a few salient points that Dr. Sheehan made here.
He said “The thing that makes life worth living is not rational”. There’s something important in that. Think about those things that make your life worth living: art, music, literature, science, and athleticism. It’s not they these things are inherently “irrational”, it’s just that our LOVE, interest and PASSION for these things is.
And that’s not a bad thing, and when you think about that…you have to agree that to have a love, interest or passion for something or someone is, in fact, irrational…but in fact, what makes our lives worth living.
It’s irrational to run a marathon, it really is: but it’s one of the things that can make life worth living, otherwise why would so many human beings take part in the play and pain of such an activity?
I also liked the Doctor’s quoting of the Boston cardiologist Doctor Paul Dudly White who said “We were meant to be field animals, to be always active and eat only when we are hungry”. That’s some damn good advice, and something that I have not followed in the past 5 years.
His comment about how the end of his work became the beginning of his day was especially poignant. We have only 16 hours of consciousness each 24 hour planetary rotation, and 8 of those hours are often dedicated to earning a living and working to pay for things. Our ancestors were hunter gatherers. They had to be active in order to live, eat and enjoy shelter.
And in the race we learn who we are. Running is the struggle for self discovery.
I have not run in a race in a very long time. It’s been years in fact. I feel like I’ve forgotten everything I talked about in the first 6 years of this podcast.
Running is about play, pain and partying. I’ve been so adverse to suffering pain that I forgot it’s benefits.
Doctor Sheehan was right in saying that we are writing our own novel every day. Lately my novel has been about a guy who sits on the < COUCH OF DOOM>.
I don’t want to be that guy.
Yesterday is a cancelled check, tomorrow is a promissory note and today is all we have.
Check out this episode!