The Cathartic Effect of Running

Common wisdom holds that running has a cathartic effect.  It’s supposed to free your mind, at least temporarily, from the daily pressures of life.  I don’t know if that has really worked for me over the past couple of months.  In fact, my pressures and worries often come out when I run.  You can hear me yelling to myself every time a negative thought passes through my brain. I guess part of the problem is that I haven’t run regularly.  You need to do it on a regular basis in order for the running itself to feel good.  Maybe I just need to start running so long that by the time I am done every negative thought held in my brain passes out of my mouth, being left in the gutter behind me.

I wish there was a dial installed on the body that would allow you to better regulate the amount of depression or anxiety you feel.  If you ever needed to get it adjusted, it would just be a matter of going down to your local service center and tell them that you are feeling a bit too depressed and have them manually crank the setting down.  It is like the chemical inside your body that causes you to feel depressed knows of only two positions; off and full blast.  It would be nice if you could objectively look at two people and quantify how much depression they should feel; say on a scale of 1 – 10.  Then the person’s level could be set accordingly.  However, that is not how it works.  I think that a person who circumstances warrant a level 5 situational depression feels just as bad as a person with a level 10 situational depression.  It doesn’t matter that one situation isn’t nearly as bad as another, both people feel just as bad.

One thing that has helped keep me going has been my runs with @Aristorat.  He has been going through his own trials and tribulations with the illness of his wife and my friend Kathleen, so we haven’t gotten out as regularly as we had just over a short month ago.  @Aristorat gets out when he can and usually gives me a call to join him.  As I am out of work right now, we have managed to go out for several runs during times when I’ve never had a chance to run before.  It has helped to add structure to my day and has given me a chance to unload some of what I have been going through to another person. 

Right now I need to focus on moving forward and not getting stuck.  I know the things I have to do and I have to push myself to do them.  I am finding it difficult, but I do not have a choice.  No one ever said that life was going to be easy.  Hopefully, once I get going again, life will become like those days when you run effortlessly and can just go on forever.