“So, have you gone for a run yet today?”
This is the question my mother almost always poses, without fail, whenever I call home from 3,000 miles away. It is asked regardless of whether I am upset, stressed, or even simply bored.
She asks this question as if running is the ultimate panacea for whatever mental struggle I am going through at any given moment.
Running is obviously not such a dramatic cure-all but, nonetheless, I have often thought of the activity as my sort of secret solace. This is not because running is something I literally keep secret from people. On the contrary, I actually see many of my friends and acquaintances as I run across campus and I frequently discuss running with other people, whether to compare routes or lament the grueling hills common to west Los Angeles.
The real reason I call running my secret solace is that, because I have never run competitively, I cannot really use it to promote myself in, say, an application or interview—the way I do my other passions including writing and academics.
However, running still does hold a lot of meaning for me in a way I do not think I have ever fully expressed in speaking or writing.
Firstly, endorphins are no myth. As a matter of fact, running is one of the best ways for me to reduce my anxiety. Having never been all that good at “relaxing” (though I do hope to improve on this), I find the intensity and rapid nature of running as a very helpful means to, well, run off my anxiety and nerves. Running on its own cannot, of course, fix anything outright but there are few problems running does not give me the mental power to manage.
Whether it is a tangible problem, like a high workload burden, or one of the more irrational worried thoughts to which I am prone, a nice four-miler is almost guaranteed to ease the pressure.
In addition, just as the introductory quote of my mother suggests, a long run can be accomplished in practically any mood. I find it is a very healthy way for me to release my frustration when I feel angry at some person or some situation. Furthermore, running is a great solution when I find myself suffering from the restlessness or lack of concentration that often occurs during the long post-class afternoons when I try to focus on my various readings.
My favorite times to run, however, are those moments when I experience bursts of giddy happiness. Yes, despite my somewhat frequent desire to exude the mysterious, even moody, persona that is stereotypically ascribed to writers, I often feel myself getting ridiculously excited about life.
There is probably nothing better than channeling that happiness by putting in my headphones, blasting guilty-pleasure pop music, and racing through campus and the nearby neighborhoods.
On a more personal note, running seriously helps me with my self-esteem. As a prime example, just this past summer, my self-esteem fell to levels I have probably not experienced since those clique-ridden days of middle school.
Yet, my ability to get up to over seven miles this very same summer reminded me that I am actually capable of many difficult feats despite what I frequently think about myself and that, no matter how physically unattractive I may feel sometimes, my body is at least speedy and powerful.
There have been times when I have considered competitively running in races like 10Ks or half-marathons. My father and I have this running (get it?) joke that I should have taken my abilities and put them towards cross-country in high school instead of participating in the far more expensive sport of synchronized figure skating, as I did.
I am not completely eliminating the possibility of running races in the future but, for now, I think I want to keep running as the one passion of mine that belongs completely to me.
This is something I cannot even say about my non-academic writing anymore as some of my writing is now publicly available for people to read, and perhaps even scrutinize.
However, my running is all still all mine. Goals like running farther or faster are for my sake only and not for the cause of winning races or impressing potential employers. I will admit that I use my habit of running for the occasional humble-brag but, besides that, I really only have myself to impress when it comes to running.
This is incredibly important for me in this insecure point of my life (that is, my senior year of college) when networking and self-marketing seem to mean everything.
I realize many of us want to take the things we love and turn them into fulfilling careers. I do hope to do that with my passions like writing and history.
Regardless, I and certainly many others, believe in the importance of engaging in activities that perhaps serve no other means besides self-satisfaction—that is, passions hidden from your resumé.
