Running for Your Life: A Look Back at 2011

Is it just me or did we tire in finding an agreeable term to describe the decade(s) since 2000? A lot can be put down to synchronicity, as in 10-10-10, 11-11-11 and 12-12-12, and, yeah, that according to the Mayan calendar all will snuff out next year, in 2012, anyway (12-21-12, for the record). As if the past twelve years have all been part of a Beckett-inspired inside joke – with the important caveat that Beckett is all about going on: “Where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”

Looking back at 2011, I’d have to say I’ve been impressed with its numerical coyness. I’ll miss that, from the back, the last two digits, 1 + 1, equals 2 + 0, Grade One arithmetic, its particular symmetry that I’ll miss next year with 2012, whose claim to coyness ends with the lopping of the first “2” (and, yeah, don’t you want to do that . . . I mean consider what this 2! brought us: 9/11, a second Bush term, Obama, the Tea Party, IOWA 2012, for God’s sake) to give us the Kindergarten sequence 0 – 1 – 2 . . . Oh, yeah, and the Mayan calendar end times. That will be something.

Here at Running for Your Life, though, I feel I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. 2011 marks my first year of twice-weekly blogging. I’d like to think that this practice has in subtle ways that I try to write about here but in fact can only scratch the surface of has changed my life.

I have, it is true, in the past year learned a lot about my body. Not only does it – even after the devastingly disappointing hamstring horror of February/March that caused me to drop out of the Boston Marathon 2011 – run longer, faster and stronger, but I feel that in concert with this practice of blog-keeping helped to also shape my mind. In my reading this past year I’ve been especially struck by this scientific observation from Dr. John Ratey, one of the top experts on the effects of exercise on the body, in The Runner’s Body http://bit.ly/tnoGfb: “[Exercise] makes the brain function at its best, and in my view, this effect of physical activity is far more important . . . than what it does for the body. Building muscles and conditioning the heart and lungs are essentially side-effects.”

Strange, I never thought my cravings would be altered. But they have, and I don’t know but what to think that it has to be because of these changes. Here I think of the great American poet Stanley Kunitz, who lived to be over one hundred, writing the poem, “The Layers” http://bit.ly/PLGOY “Though I lack the art to decipher it,/no doubt the next chapter/in my book of transformations/is already written./I am not done with my changes.”

I don’t care to drink as much as I used to. Or fill up with trans fat snacks. Or drink sugary sodas. Or even Diet ones. In 2011, for the most part, I have slept like a dream. And I run, with a passion that seems never-ending.

I am blessed, too, with love. My wife M, my daughter K. Family on both sides. Fun and joy of a tireless pup, Thurb. Friends. In that past year I have reconnected with many of you, through these writings and through the stories and videos you post.

2011 was also the year of OWS. I wonder what lies ahead as much as I marvel at the hope and courage and compassion of the millions who are now engaged in a type of politics that seems different, that speaks of possibility of a new generation, of K’s generation, that maybe, among other things, will create a new way to look at our times beyond the limits of the Mad Ave naming of our decades.

Happy New Year, everyone! Go for it with gusto!

Next: Running for Your Life: Jobs, Revisited