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March 20, 2005
Be Human, Be Spiritual!
I’ve said this before, it’s not separable. We cannot be just human or just spiritual because we have these physical bodies and physical life requirements like eating and breathing and sleeping, and because we have these spirits that can love and feel and think and make choices.
At the most basic level I believe that our breathing, eating and rest are instinctual or biologically driven. If we are exhausted eventually our bodies crash and get the much-needed rest. If we are hungry we get hunger pains we know what to do with that. If we try to hold our breath or strangle ourselves with our own two hands, even if we did have the shear determination to stop our breathing, we would pass out and our hands relax and our bodies resume it’s breathing automatically.
At the most basic level I believe our spirits also have some aspects that are automatic. We like to love and be loved, and we don’t really want to hurt other people. Of course just like our physical life, we could override these things. We could choose to be cruel, abusive, greedy or possessive. We could choose to end our own lives. But let’s say we don’t and we choose to continue living our lives. Well we live, spirit and body together, making choices until we have no more choices to make. Eventually our bodies or minds will crap out on us and we go on past this form of life. But while we are living and making choices, what do we choose to do?
This is where spirit-humans diverge on ideas. Some people really get it and some people really get off course and try to override our most basic instincts. Philosophers can debate the meaning and purpose of life all we want, but life as a human being with spirit goes on and we have to make choices about what to do with our allotted time, gifts, talents, and resources. Even the nature of God or even if God exists can be debated until we are blue in the face, but we cannot debate that we exist, because we are here, living, breathing, eating, sleeping, thinking, loving, hating, making choices and life goes on whatever the verdict is.
I love living life, and that is a choice. No matter what happens I know that my physical body and my spirit are inseparable until the time of my death. No matter what happens then it will be then not now. Since I’ve chosen to continue living until my natural or unnatural demise I choose to be happy about it and continue on. I can be happy about life by living it as close to my natural, automated instincts as I can. The more I try to override these, the closer I come to suffering and the end of living. Do you know people who are so miserable that what they are doing cannot be considered really living? Yes physically they are alive, but spiritually they gave up, or have overridden their desire to give love. They may still want to be loved, but that’s a different story. Right now I’m talking about the quality of our lives. We are alive in body and spirit and we can choose to live.
Other people can tell us that, “oh no you can’t really live until you believe this or believe that!” Or, “you can’t be truly happy until you believe this or that!” But guess what? No matter what the philosopher’s verdict is, we go on living, body and spirit, inseparable for the amount of time we end up with. In this way we are all equal. None greater or less valuable. And no one else can actually jump inside of us and breathe or think for us. Even if someone is very controlling and tries to dictate how we think, and we let them tell us what to think, we still have to choose to think that, because it’s our brain and our spirit, not someone else’s! In this way we are each unique. One person cannot be another person and do life for them.
Now that brings me to today’s 8k (5-mile) “B-Human, the Human Race,” which is really a Spiritual race because the two are inseparable. About mile 4 I was wondering why I chose to do this particular activity out of all my millions of options. hehe.
Before the race started I struck up a conversation with a guy older than me. He was about 54 I think he said. We talked about the race and I asked him how long he’d been running, and how he felt for today’s race and if he had been doing other races. He asked me about my running and about other races and I told him about my run last week at the Lake Johanna 4-mile. I told him I was just starting and we shared a few moments of pure joy over our mutual experiences as runners. He had been running for a lifetime, and had a lot to say about living a lifestyle of fitness and training. He was in really good shape and was exited about starting the race. So was I, well, at least the getting started part. Then as it got closer, I lost him in the crowd of about XXXX thousand other spirits who wanted to get going at being human. Why are all these people choosing to do this? To talk to them, it’s a spiritual thing. It’s a love of living life. After the race I was sitting on the St. Thomas field house floor stretching out and the young guy next to me was also stretching and just hanging out waiting for the final results and eating snacks and drinking water. We were less than 3 feet apart so I started talking to him. He’s an avid runner and today his hopes were to just run 7-minute miles. He was really happy that he did it, and surpassed his goals. And he should be happy! It was his choice to run the thing, and he should be happy about doing what he chose to do, and it’s good to be happy about surpassing our expectations! When they finally posted the official results on the wall, I pointed over there and told him they just put the results up, so he threw his shoes on and excitedly walked over there. There was already a crowd there trying to see their official time. Let me explain. No. There is too much. Let me sum up. ;-) Times were being read off at every mile so we had a good idea about how fast we were running, but those times were started when the very first runner passed the starting point. We each had a chip on our shoe that recorded our actual start and stop time. With thousands of runners, it may have taken several minutes to just get to the starting point, but it didn’t matter because our actual times were recorded and our official results were posted on the wall.
When that young guy came back from looking at the results he had a smile on his face. I asked him how he did and he told me he came in 69th or was that 96th place? He ran a pace of 6 something per mile. He was happy with the results. He told me next week he has another race to run. Then I went over to check my time and placement.
Now tonight as I’m writing this, my legs are stiff and I have a hard time walking because I have some pain in my inner thighs. It’s not critical, but it reminds me that I am still in the beginning stages of my fitness plan. I ran my fastest time yet. I did the whole 8k race in 35:35, which is a pace of 7:10 per mile! I came in at 316th place. Before I did it, I told myself that my goal was 7:30 per mile for all 5 miles. This was a mile longer than last week’s race so I didn’t know how fast I could run that last mile. By the third mile today I was exactly at 21 minutes, just like last week, but this time when I hit the fourth mile I was just over 28 minutes. I was slowing down and I felt like I was going to die. “Where is that finish line?” I thought. “Why am I doing this?” “It has to be soon. It’s only one mile, I can make it.” Then when it was over I thought, “That was fun!” And, “That wasn’t so bad.”
As I was sitting on the field house floor stretching I called my wife to tell her I was still alive, and then talked to my son who was just headed back to college after spring break. He said, “Good job dad, I’m really proud of you. That’s really good!”
After the top finishers were announced and a few people got up and spoke it was over. I got on my bike and rode home. On my way home, I was happy I had chosen to ride my bike, because it gave me a chance to loosen my muscles and keep them warm. I took a shower and a short nap to recover a little, then ate dinner and watched the Van Helsing movie. He said, “I fight evil. That’s what I do.”
No matter what our choices are in life, we have to do what we do to the best of our abilities. We have to make choices no matter what anyone says we should do. Go on living, make your choices. You have to anyway, so make the best of it. My choices? My spirit tells me to fly, and how can I expect to fly if I cannot yet run? But I’m getting closer.
In my race packet there was one piece of literature that is a possible answer to my question from yesterday. It is inspiring if I choose to be bold enough. Be human, be spiritual. Don’t forget the part that loves others and thinks and feels in everything we do and in every choice we make. Life is worth really living.
Posted by carl1236 at March 20, 2005 10:32 PM
Comments
I suspect you'd enjoy The Famished Road by Ben Okri.
Posted by: nathan at March 21, 2005 12:43 PM