The Magical Everyday
I’m a runner.
I’ve been a runner (and racer) most of my life. It’s a huge part of who I am. From the start of my teenage years through University to adulthood it has marked my life journey. I’ve travelled the world racing. I’ve won. I’ve lost. I haven’t finished. I’ve met lifelong friends and connected deeply with strangers and new places.
I can’t run.
The last time I ran was, ironically, St. Stephen’s Day (26th December) five long weeks ago. It will be at least another five weeks, in the worst-case scenario, five months or more before I can run again. A complicated bone injury sustained during the Barcelona Marathon in November means a period of rehabilitation and no clear pathway forward. January was the first month in living memory that I didn’t run a single step.
Running most days of my life for over 30 years gave me joy, of course. Inevitably, on many of those days I didn’t enjoy it, and didn’t do it. How do I feel now? Maybe you have an idea, but let me try and unpack those feelings.
In, admittedly, faster times
The starting point has been a question:
why do we place less value on the things we do every day?
Is it true that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, no matter how special the thing is? Of course, truly special things may happen once in a lifetime. A wedding day, the birth of a new life.
There’s also only one time you do something for the first time, and for many of those things, you never forget that first time. Events of less frequency may also hold an element of magic, a birthday, Christmas Day perhaps.
Yet this logic, part of the cadence of life let’s say, should not blind us from the magic there is in the every day. The wonder of life and the world around us.
I spent most of my January designing and delivering two new workshops. Two people were highlighted who were subsequently in the public eye over the past week. First, as part of a section on mindfulness and mindful action I showed a talk from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who sadly passed last week.
"You have the capacity to drink your water mindfully, there is no doubt about that."
— Thich Nhat Hanh (@thichnhathanh) November 24, 2021
Thich Nhat Hanh on the art of drinking your water. pic.twitter.com/Jbe5fc3XzT
Some may view the above clip on mindfully drinking water as to be so simplistic that it is nonsensical, and yet it can also be viewed as holding all the wisdom of the ages. It strikes me right to the core of feelings regarding practice and perception.
Do you know how a Buddhist monk passes their day? They typically wake at 4:30am followed by early morning prayers or recitation and personal hygiene. They may then go to collect alms and return for breakfast. Learning takes up the rest of the morning with the main meal of the day around lunchtime, which for them is, typically the last meal of the day. More learning, prayers and meditation follow and then comes the afternoon when work is done for the physical upkeep of the monastery. Everyone is in bed by 7pm. Seven days a week, 365 (or 366) days a year.
Could you live such a life? I know I couldn’t. But, still, maybe there are some elements of their experience we could adopt? The last stretch of writing The Daily Reset gave me some insight. Several days alone, mostly in silence, following a simple routine each day. Early to bed and early to rise. I wouldn’t want that as my typical life but there was a pleasure and fullness in the simplicity and isolation, of observing the same patterns in the world around me each day, of appreciating the symmetry.
What monastic practices could you implement today? De-cluttering? Listening without judgement? Learning something new? Taking on just one task at a time? Letting go of what you can’t control?
A second person I used in a workshop, on the theme of deliberate, or mindful, practice, was Rafa Nadal. Nadal produced a typically courageous display in the final of the Australian Open last week to become the first male player to win 21 Grand Slams. I started using a video of Nadal, from a Nike commercial, over a decade ago, in which Nadal and his coach, his Uncle Toni, discuss his change from playing with two hands to becoming a left-handed player – a change that required many hours of practice to get right from an early age.
The interviewer then asks Nadal if he can do anything else with his left hand, and he is shown having great difficulty with the simplest of tasks. Think of Nadal’s “superhuman” left-hand during a tennis match, yet he can’t write his name, or brush his teeth, or hit a dart board from a couple of feet away with that left hand. He hasn’t practiced those things.
But it’s more than practice. It’s mindful practice – finding the focus, and the magic, in the everyday things. For Nadal, just because he trains different aspects of his Tennis game every day doesn’t mean he loses that focus, or magic.
So how do I feel that I can’t run? To be honest I have some difficult moments, but I’m also embracing the opportunity. I’m taking early morning walks with my dog, much more mindful of the rising sun and birdsong that I might miss on a hard run. I’m going back to basics on core strength and posture that will make me a better runner and healthier human in the long-term. I’m learning, again, that learning never stops. I’ve been a runner most of my life but made a series of errors, pre- and post-Barcelona Marathon which resulted in my present situation.
In general, I’m reminded, again, that wellbeing is not a destination, it’s a journey. It’s never complete, it’s always in play. And to fuel that wellbeing journey we need greater awareness – to pay closer attention to the world, and the magic, around us. Let me try and illustrate what I mean.
David Foster Wallace was an accomplished writer and University professor. In his Commencement address to the 2005 class at Kenyon College, he opened with a story of two goldfish swimming along when one day they encounter another, older fish swimming in the opposite direction. The older fish says, ‘Morning boys, how’s the water?’ The two younger fish then look at each other and say, ‘What the hell is water?’
There is magic in the everyday. I can’t experience the magic of running for a time, but it’s made me look out for the magic elsewhere.