Lately, I have been seeing on social media a burgeoning craze about running. One of my friends shared an Instagram reel about running and recording their runs using the app Strava, a pretty popular pedometer, after which all of my reels were filled with Strava and running instead of my usual racist and misogynistic content that I watch. Fortunately, I got my algorithm back to its proper calibration, but that brief interlude made me realize that many were pretty serious about running. My friend certainly was. A few days ago, they showed me screenshots of their Strava runs which recorded their pace, their distance, and the route they followed on their runs. And she asked me to start running as well. I declined saying that my daily walks were more than enough to keep me moving. But they said running was much better than walking, that it was about “endurance.”
Now I take offense to that. Those two statements imply that walking is worse than running (which it is not), and that it is not about endurance (which it is). While it is true that running is more physically strenuous than walking, however, to reduce these two to just their corporeal nature is missing the mark. It is like reducing food to just fuel. Food is more than just sustenance. Food is about communion. Not just communion shared with friends and family, but communion with nature and with God. And the religions know of this, especially Christianity, where every feast is always a sacrifice as well. Walking too is communion. When you walk, the whole world moves with you for a little moment. You see the trees uproot themselves and follow you a little way, enough to show solidarity but enough to keep their nature as earth’s loyal sentinels. Even the sun and moon conform themselves above as if balloons dragged along by an unseen thread.
But what about running? Running is trying to outrun the world. It is a blasphemous act, like trying to scoop wetness out of water. Whereas walking is about using the road as it is intended, for man’s feet to tread upon, running is about fleeing it and trying to exhaust it. It is man’s great hubris to think he can spend anything to null and void which is why the Almighty made the world round in order for man to return back to where he came from and hence learn humility. …Till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.
And there lies the clinch. Running is just exaggerated walking. It is a mimicry of nature’s perfection, a distended shadow on the wall, tofu masquerading as meat. The runner thinks he can pass the world by, but in the end, it is him who passes out into it. The runner thinks he can escape. The walker has no such delusion. He is a creature of the world, meant to haunt all its hallowed paths until he can no more, and he is happy of it. The runner is never happy. All the sights of the world are but a collage to him, and according to him, for him. For the walker it is he who is a sight for the world to see. A mere dot in the grand painting, a wanderer in a wandering world.
