Why do i run?

 2008: First over of the AFL cup final match and my batting partner calls me for a quick single. We look into each other’s eyes and just nod our heads. As I run to the danger end my heart knows am not going to make it. As my mind pictures me getting run out, life enacts my thoughts perfectly. I am run out once again..... As I walked back to the dressing room in frustration, I got memories of me never being a good runner in school. School, college, dating, job interviews I always felt I just wasn’t making it. Life was ‘running me out’ on numerous occasions. To the outside world these missed opportunities dint seem to matter much and looked trivial. 

To me they mattered a lot. I was an amazing sportsman and I loved sports but I just couldn’t run as well. Seemed like I wanted to play every sport but dint wanna run...irony of its sorts. So was the same in life. I wanted to live life well and I wanted to be at the right time and right place in life doing the right things. But I wasn’t running hard in life too. Every wasted opportunity in life felt like walking back to the crease run out once again. 

But in January 2009, I ran the 21 kms Mumbai marathon in 2.38 hrs and since then I have been running 

It all started with a trivial office joke. My office colleagues were making fun of me getting running out in every single cricket match and how I would run in slow motion during the Mumbai marathon if I took part in it. What should have been just ignored as a stupid joke was taken up too seriously by me. I decided I had to run and prove a point!! What the heck, people who had never played any sport in their life wanted to tease the hell out of me. 

For months I practised hard and ran well. Rain, heat & cold I ran every single day across marine drive. Sometimes just jogged alone at marine drive while it poured heavily. With all the practise, the marathon wasn’t a difficult one for me.  I ran well and finished well within the time to silence my colleagues. 

What next? Why did I still wanna run? I had proved my point. Now why did I want to run? Why wake up at 6 am and run? Which fool does that? And I wasn’t even a good runner? Why the fuck did I have to run?? I just couldn’t stop now and I dint know the reason…

Like Master Oogway says “One often meets his destiny on the road he avoids to take”  At the age of 30, I had allowed all my passions to drift away. One after the other they left me like old buddies. Each time something felt good in life it just vanished very quickly. But as my old buddies left me, I was embracing a very old enemy.  

As I ran everyday out of mere habit, I realised that my old enemy and my now my new friend was taking me to a place I loved. I called this secret place of ours ‘THE ZONE’. I loved visiting this new place. Every sportsman whether an amateur like me or pro can tell you what ‘The Zone’ is. ‘The Zone’ is a feeling when everything around the sportsman stops. Time stands still. The sportsman can’t listen to the crowd. All he can see is the ball being hurled at him and he just wants to hit the ball to the best of his ability. Then there is no winning or loosing. No completion or its prize money. No past No future. No records and no statistics. And even though you don’t care about wining or loosing, when you are in the zone records are built, centuries are made and grand slams are won. 

You get a feeling that this is it. You wanna stand and tell everyone I have been there. This is The Zone, this is where I am meant to be. I don’t want anything else. I am in The Zone and before you can even witness it yourself it’s gone. And you don’t know when it is coming back. 

If you look or search for it, it evades you like a butterfly. But if you just don’t chase it visits you sometimes and stays with you for a brief moment. So do I run to go to this happy place called Zone. Nahhh!! It just comes and goes. I can’t chase it. I am led there by someone…

So I ask myself once again why do I run?   I run for various reasons and most of them are revealed to me only in the morning when I start taking a few steps.

I run sometimes out of love for family and friends wishing them great things, sometime out anger of all the people who rejected me and sometimes out of fear about what’s going to happen next to me in life. Many times I am in office and frustrated and I just wanna put my sneakers on and run cause I wanna run away from life… Run away to a friend, to GOD to someone who can help…I just wanna run away from everything…

As Jackie Chan says in the movie Karate Kid “When life knocks you down. You can choose whether to get back up”. When I feel like running away from the world ‘Running’ stops me from running away. 

I run silently with myself hearing only my breath around me. I can’t feel anything else, not even my thoughts. And as I run my friend starts to cheer me up. Slowly, I feel I can outrun even the wind. I can just keep running and I need no purpose to run. I just wanna run cause I am on a song. I am the artist and I am the song itself. It’s all flowing through me to me. I take the perfect steps while running and see my self as an athlete.

All the fears disappear and my mind is crystal clear. Its as if someone has just removed all the filth and dirt. I feel that my pursuit for happiness has just ended!! 

And yet the pursuit begins all over again when I get back to my day to day life. Life throws back something once again..

The movie, Kung fu Panda 2, tells us that to find Inner Peace, one can meditate for 50 years up a beautiful mountain with waterfalls and caves (being one with nature)... or chance upon that realisation by being still in the mind through something you love ( in Po’s case its kung fu). Po discovers that one needs to go with the flow of life and let the emotions flow through him

To be still I need to run!!!!!! Running has become my source of insight. I need to move through time and distance to remain still!! Running helps me go with the flow of life and accept things peacefully.

As I chance upon this realisation I run while listening to my favourite song ‘I get knocked down but I get up again’.  It’s when the hero of my little story feels he can go any distance....and he wont be RUN OUT..