Running, thinking and the joy of mediocrity

Yesterday, I ran 12k to support 40+ formerly homeless men and women who were also running in the Colfax Marathon here in Denver. I ran the last leg of our relay, so I got to cross the finish line. This felt great. As a bookish person who received her lowest college grade in Badminton, feeling athletic -- experiencing triumph in my muscles -- was very cool and exciting. When I rounded the corner, I saw colorful banners, I heard drums beating, and my heart swelled. I stared at the back of the man who I'd been shadowing the whole race, and decided that I would beat him. So I cranked up Joss Stone, threw my head back, and sprinted as fast as I could.

Here's the thing, though. In my excitement, I mistook something that wasn't the finish line for the finish line. (The line I assumed to be the finish line was actually a blue name-scanner. Announcers read your name from it as you approach the end of the race, and share it with onlookers). So, I stopped after this pseudo-finish line, sweating, panting and very pleased with myself. Woohoo! I flashed a big, charming smile at my friends and the photographers. Except they all started screaming at me to keep running, you idiot.

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Running has really made my life better; I have more energy, and I feel more strong and capable in general. Now, I think I understand why running has proved a very useful tool for our men and women as they struggle to achieve sobriety and self-sufficiency; the benefits of running spill over to all areas of life. First of all, training with a team helps runners to rely on others, and to practice discipine and commitment in community. Second, with every step, runners have to really engage with their own weaknesses, their desire to give up. After physically wrestling, and winning, they feel stronger in mind, body and spirit, and empowered to achieve other goals as well. Third, a long run includes easy patches and rough patches. Expecting and preparing for difficulty might help runners/recovering addicts to prepare for dog-days, when the high inevitably wears off, when practicing sobriety becomes gruelling, depressing and lonely.

As I ran, I ruminated. Really, I thought to myself as sweat poured off my body, as the sun scalded the back of my neck, really I can see why a "journey" or a "race" is such a fitting metaphor for life. Like a good story, a race draws its worth and intrigue from conflict, from pushing (all types of conflict: man v. himself, man v. nature, man v. others (competitors)). Also, in a race, time figures heavily, even tyranically, just as it does for so many characters who wrestle with mortality. And, as I ran, I remarked to myself that the dynamic metaphor of a journey allows authors to project characters' shifting mindsets on the changing landscapes outside.

I thought all of this while I was running. Seriously. As my feet pounded the pavement, I pondered over the metaphors that shape our consciousness. Which is maybe why I neglected to cross the real finish line, which is maybe why I got a B- in college badminton.

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Looking back at my time at Wheaton College, I see now that as an undergraduate, I believed that you should only study a discipline if you could master it. For example, in theatre, I was profoundly unhappy when I wasn't the star. When I got cast in roles I didn't want, I withdrew. I wasn't able to have fun unless I felt like I was the best. My competitive spirit prevented me from seeing that the discipline of WorkOut (our theatre ensemble) was changing my heart and my mind for the better. A second example is exercise: I never ran with people who were faster than me, because it made me mad.

Similarly, from attending some leadership seminars and observing goings-on in my own workplace, I've noticed that the current trend in management is to capitalize on your employees' strengths, and to ignore their weak spots. (Marcus Buckingham, Tom Rath). I suppose this strategy makes sense from an efficiency standpoint. And helping people become the best that they can be is a very worthy goal.

But isn't it dangerous to limit yourself to activities you feel safe and comepetent doing? And isn't it good to learn how to fail or fall? Yesterday, I didn't care about my mediocre race time, or losing to the man in front of me; I was happy just to have ran 7.4 miles in support of a worthy cause. So now, I am wondering about the soul-benefits of an average performance. I wonder about the joy in being content to merely tinker, to dabble, to have a hobby. For anyone -- a writer, baker or candlestick maker -- a hobby requiring discipline (for example, running) expands your sense of what you can do, and helps you in your real "calling" -- or, if you don't care for this terminology, helps you accomplish what you want to achieve in your vocation of choice. Me, I'll never be an amazing runner. Neither will most of these men and women; after years of malnourishment and breaking down their bodies with drugs and alcohol, they'll never run a 3 hour marathon. But running, even painstakingly, gingerly, or slowly, is worthwhile if it gets people out of their heads, helps them feel stronger, helps them to escape homelessness or addiction, or helps them to have fun. So, hobbies, even ones we're no good at, maybe even especially the ones we're no good at, teach us how to be gracious in mediocrity.

Hobbies also teach us how to fail. In engaging a hobby, we escape the sphere of concrete achievement, and live in a new, expanded space where we are free to tumble, to get scraped up. To make mistakes. Who cares ... it's just a hobby! And in falling, we grow stronger. By contrast, when we are trying to get the lead, to write the best essay, we refuse to fall or fail. We hold on too tightly, too determinedly. For example, sometimes I feel my writing is so measured, so careful, so safe, so ... fearful. What would it feel like to write like I run -- gleefully, and with abandon?

Footnote: I read an essay last night by Joyce Carol Oates on how the benefits of running spill over into her writing life. http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/071999oates-writing.html Listen to this: "Running is a meditation; more practicably it allows me to scroll through, in my mind's eye, the pages I've just written, proofreading for errors and improvements. " What strikes me here is that Ms. Oates isn't really running when she's running, is she? She's writing -- her feet just happen to be moving simulataneously. Always, always thinking about a writing project strikes me as very "artistic" -- the author haunted by her art -- but also nightmarish. No rest. When I run, I think I'd like to run for running's sake, for a little bit of a break from words.

One self, two self, red self, blue self

I've been trying to write a new blog entry about the interview process. Now I’m realizing that my thoughts are complex, just like the people I talk to. I need more time.

For now, I'll just write about one aspect of interviewing, one that has challenged and intrigued me, namely that formerly homeless people never want to talk about life on the streets. They want to fast-forward to having it together.


I’ll ask someone what being homeless was like, hoping that he’ll share sensory details, specific memories. Instead, he’ll tersely say, "It sucked." In other words: it’s none of your business. At other times, the interviewee confuses herself as she tries to remember: “It was like a dream,” she concludes. And so I have to press further. When I do, people will usually oblige with more specifics. As they share details from their pasts, many people break down. Some lose composure completely, shoulders heaving, cradling their faces in their hands. Most often, people pretend that the tears glistening on their cheeks do not exist. “Something in my eye. One second.”

Of course I do not blame anyone for trying to avoid painful and shameful memories. Who would want to relive waking up on the cold pavement, smelling of alcohol and urine? In telling my own story to others, I too gloss over the parts I want to forget. If somebody asks for more detail, I balk.

Initially, I believed that unwillingness to talk about pain or shame stemmed from the desire to avoid revisiting these experiences. Now, I wonder if reticence with regard to the past has a deeper root than eluding discomfort. Perhaps in our unwillingness to speak of the past, we wish to dissociate ourselves from who we once were. I believe that this effort to discard our old selves for better selves shapes the way we think about our lives, and the way we tell our stories to others.

The power of this impulse -- to become new -- is particularly evident to me when I talk to graduates of our long-term rehabilitiation program.

For example, the last person I interviewed from the long-term program -- let's call him "J.R." --gushed, "You should have seen me before. I had long scraggly, hair. Today, I've put on weight and I have a nice haircut. I'm a new man!" What J.R. most wanted was not merely to escape the discomforts of life on the streets, but to become a new person. The only extant evidence of his old self is a single photograph, he said. Today, this photograph is stashed away in the filing cabinet at a detox center -- somewhere in Nevada.

Here’s another example of someone trying to don a new self. One of my favorite college professors – we’ll call him “M” -- told us that when he was four years old, his parents came home to find that someone had colored all over the wallpaper in bold, broad strokes. “Who did this?” they asked their kids.

“It was him,” the children said, pointing to the young M.

All eyes turned. “Well?” his parents asked.

The young boy hesitated, thought for awhile, and then said: “That was the old M. The new M wouldn’t do that.”

M’s story illustrates our willingness to leave behind old selves when we find ourselves in trouble. Of course, for J.R. the stakes are higher than a spanking. Desperate, alone, and confused, he needed to find - or to be given -- a new self, if he was to beat his addictions and (self-proclaimed) self-hatred. Today, J.R. believes he's found that self. "I'm a new creation," he says, beaming from ear to ear. Then, he goes on about his new, smooth hair, and how every day is a beautiful, new day.

He's happy talking about this, I think. I don't want to ask him to go back to the days on the streets. I can tell he won't want to go back. I wouldn't.

But it's my job to unearth his buried old self. From studying focus groups, I’ve learned that donors respond to need, rather than to solutions. (Apparently, middle-aged women especially respond to older men who look like they need saving.) So, if I’m to write effectively, I’ve got to hunt down this man’s former self – the dirty self who lived under a bridge, who ate one meal a week, who fought with cops and had no hope. I've got to find the self he'd rather forget. In pressing for details, I feel rude and invasive ... I wish I could let him continue to delight in his newfound gladness and his new sense of possibilities ... but I can't.

And so I say, slowly … "Let's back up a little bit … to when you were living in the park.”

Under the bridge

I write under a highway. It's my job. Under I-70, the air is thick with dust and ash. Sometimes, debris falls from above, damaging co-workers' cars. (So far, I've been lucky). Homeless people walk up and down the train tracks, picking at trash, possessions slung over their shoulders in hapless bundles. Today, coming back from lunch, I saw a prostitute (I assume) tumble out of a truck's passenger side. The truck screeched away. She tossed her hair out of her face, got up and began to dance, flailing her arms, swaying her hips, smiling with the maddening secrecy of the Mona Lisa.

"Man, she's loaded," my friend, who was driving, remarked.

I peered closer. Deep purple bruises burgeoned under the dancing lady's eye. When shafts of sunlight caught them, the bruises winked and glimmered in the sunlight.

(When I started my job here, I'd naively assumed prostitutes wore slinky boots and red leather. Not so. Prostitutes -- at least, the ones I see out my window soliciting the truckers -- dress and look like tired mothers at church potlucks. They wear Keds and applique sweaters.)

My job is to write about these people -- the desperate people under the bridge, the needy people all over the city. My job is to tell homeless and low-income people's stories in a compelling way, so that our donors will give us money to help them. Initially, I was ashamed, I think, of writing to raise money, rather than writing to create "art" or "literature." Now, six months into my job, I regret my stupid elitism. I am a very lucky girl. I get paid to drive around the city, to meet people in their homes, to listen to them tell their stories. I see their children's shy smiles. I see gruff fathers' faces crumple into tears. I watch their eyes light up when they make discoveries, as they piece together their own lives.

I get to write not only to reflect the world, but to try to change it, to advocate for people who are desperate. That's a privilege.

So, my job has humbled me, and prompted me to rethink the hierarchy I'd formed in my mind about "types" of writing. In addition, my job has helped me grow in that assignments' guidelines have refined my writing skills. For example, since I have strict word limits, I must choose words more deliberately than ever before. And since each piece is designed for a purpose, I must order words carefully, marshaling them on the page, as if for battle. Sometimes, my audience is a donor base of 100,000+ people, as diverse as it is wide. In these cases, I must try to appeal to basic human instinct. Forget the lacy, complicated, useless theses I so carefully wrought as an undergraduate. Instead, I've learned to write around everyday, "universally appreciable" realities. A gurgling stomach, for example. Shame in asking. Huddling for warmth. Worrying about children. Longing for a home. Wondering, "how did I get here?" Looking to the sky for a sign.

I don't think I'll stay under the bridge forever, though. Yesterday, I took the Strengths.Finder 2.0 online test. My employer paid for each of us to take this. I find my five strengths hilarious: Input, Intellection, Learning, Ideation and Context. Read here: I'm a huge, awkward nerd. According to this test, I love to learn, to observe, to absorb information and sensory data, and to engage other people in conversation. ("You should stop thinking ... you'd feel better," a coworker said to me today). Sometimes, the solitary act of writing burdens me. I want to see my readers' faces, want to argue ideas aloud, to make a fuss and some noise. Perhaps, someday, these "strengths" will lead me back to university, to teach writing or acting. In the meantime, I am content to listen to people who've struggled mightily, and to try to honor them with words. On this particular afternoon, here in the cool darkness of my office, I hope that my writing will help Denver to see and consider people who might have otherwise remained invisible. (As I hope for this, crazies pound on the window, drunk people stagger through the parking lot, and passing trucks make the earth shake and rumble).