I am not a runner

I’ve borrowed this title from my friend Lara Robinson and her Saturday Morning Zen blog. Lara recently wrote about not feeling like a runner. It got me to thinking … and I want to take it in a different direction.

In Lara’s blog she questions her status as a runner. She hasn’t run much in several months and voices the loss she feels.

I can relate to this feeling. At one point I was cycling five or six times a week with long rides on the weekends. I considered myself a cyclist. Then I went over the handlebars smashing my face, I don’t recommend this maneuver by the way. The recovery from the facial injuries and brain injuries took two years and for perhaps a year of that, I did very little exercise. My body wouldn’t let me, and thankfully I listened. I felt the loss of my identity as an athlete, as a cyclist. It was even more than that, I slept a lot and in general didn’t have much energy. I hardly went out with friends, I wasn’t very productive at work or at home. My identities as a productive person, as a friend, as a social being – and many more – were challenged over and over.

I didn’t know who I was or how to describe myself. My definition of who I was was dependent on what I did.

We all feel this and we feel this as loss because we hang our confidence and our identity on words and ideas. We are attached, and perhaps with good reason, to these identities; what or who would we be without them? For me, the sense of attachment is greatly diminished, one of the brutal lessons of losing your identities.

So as I read Lara’s blog, a different thought and feeling came to me. Running is an expression of who I am, but it doesn’t define me. Cycling was an expression of who I am, though I don’t express myself much that way anymore. Dancing, singing, playing music are artistic expressions of who I am. Doing bodywork and writing software are completely different expressions of who I am. As a friend, I convey myself in a particular way. As a lover, my heart and soul expresses in a beautiful tangle of bodies and hearts and energies.

Each of these, and more, is an expression of who I am. Each piece is like a hologram, where each piece of a hologram reflects the whole. They flow through me fluidly and easily (mostly).

So, no I am not a runner, but running is a genuine expression of my being and my soul. And it’s sure fun!