Existential meanderings: Running as a metaphor to Life

Back in January, when the year was still young, and I was a naive enthusiastic fresh-out-of-college student brimming with ideas on how to live my life the coming year, I resolved to do one thing: Find balance--"Do good work. Spend time with family. Have a decent social life."

 A friend sent me one of Kenneth Koch's poems then, and this will remain one thing I can never forget for the entirety of my life. Putting it up here, so that you can take a look too. Essentially, what it says is this: You cannot have work,friends and family all at once. You have to choose two out of three. I remember reading it, then re-reading it again. I did this many times, till it hypnotized me and haunted me. It seemed to strike a note of finality, like the final nail in a coffin. Every note rang true, and there seemed no way around it. It reminded me of those design trade offs--two you can have, but three is impossible. Power,area,timing.

But like I said, I was naive and young, and I wasn't ready to accept someone else's words at face value, no matter how true they sounded. I wanted to try the impossible for myself. So I clearly outlined the things I wanted to do, and started living each day accordingly. 

 Jan, Feb and March were glorious months. I would read for two hours a day, write at least twice a week, spend the entire weekend with friends-sometimes with as little as 2 hours sleep per day, talk and joke at home everyday, watch good stuff in my free time, go for long walks and so on, all the while putting in decent time at work and making progress. The list was endless and yet, somehow, magically, I seemed to have time for it all. I juggled between meeting two groups of friends, maintained contact with yet another set remotely and even made new friends. After a weekend of revelry, I would come in to work on Monday, a little tired but radiantly happy. My spirits and energy levels were on an all time high. Could life be any better? It seemed that Kenneth was wrong. You could have it all, and I was living proof of that.

But I was young and naive, and April and May were designed to prove me wrong. The thing about these first 3 months was that work was not very demanding--I could do whatever was asked of me without straining to do it. It was effortless. But life isn't always that way now, is it? Come April, I found myself working on multiple things in parallel, and all with impossibly close deadlines. I was now forced to choose. I made the same choice that I've always made--work. I've always thought of work as something defining and have been stereotyped as a workaholic many a time. I found myself putting in long hours all through the week and getting home without an ounce of energy left. When the weekend came, I could barely drag myself out of bed. I would spend the entire day with a book, or worse still, just sleeping my exhaustion away.

Kenneth was right. In fact, he was optimistic. I couldn't even get two out of three right--just one:work. My family and friends took a severe beating these two months. I can't remember the last time I had a decent conversation or a meal with my parents. I now had a disgruntled set of friends, who complained that I never made time to meet them, call them or even text them. I had no idea what to do.

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's having a laser sharp focus on what I do. What people call drive, and what I call fire. I give myself completely to what I'm doing. And why wouldn't I? Think of it this way: You see your goal ahead. The path to it is adventurous, fun and challenging. What do you do? Inch towards it in indifference and apathy? Definitely not. Put in all your energy into overcoming those obstacles, and run as fast as you can. Ah, the sheer adrenaline rush is worth it. The thrill of seeing that finish line inch closer, the feel of the burn in your legs, every breath a wisp of fire through your lungs. 

And that is exactly where the problem is. Life is not a sprint, and you should stop treating it like one. You know what the fire and adrenaline do to you? Burn you out quicker than a candle lit at both ends. 

Eventually you'll end up where I am today, so exhausted that you can't even think straight. Waking up and dragging yourself out of bed seems like a phenomenal chore. June is a new month altogether, and it begins with me feeling drained. I see that finish line as the month end and everyday is a countdown to it. I still have a million things to do. It is sheer endurance that keeps me going. 

A couple of people called me recently. One of them asked me: You said your life would be all sunshine after May 21. That was the magic date. What happened? I had no answer. The magic date was something I gave myself, in order to retain some sanity. If there was an end goal in sight, it would make the last hundred yards easier. But it had come and gone, and my life was no better for it. Another friend asked me When will  you be free? I replied When this is done.

Pat came her reply There will be something else after this. You will never be "done", Prash. Make yourself free now. But what happens when soon after reaching one finish line, you see another one looming in the distance? And then another..and yet another. Your life is one finish line after another. Can you keep running as fast as possible till the very end?

 

No, of course not. And even if you do, what about the others things in life? Would I be happy if the only thing I did in my entire life was to work, to the best of my ability? No, I would regret all the other things that got left behind, just because I was too single minded. I want a life, centered around work yes, but definitely not consumed by work alone. The poem was again stuck in my mind, and I wondered if there was any way around it.

This morning, on my daily commute, I was reading something on the much acclaimed "work-life balance". The author had many interesting points to make, and his own experience was similar to my struggles of the past two months. It only confirmed my fears:

"Ambition can become a vacuum that sucks in everything in its path. It’s what you think about in the shower, on your commute, or during any idle moment. I’ve read more than a hundred biographies of elite performers and have yet to find one who was not consumed with being world-class to the point of obsession and who didn’t reorient their life around their craft."

But then, he went on to make a simple but profound analogy between running and life, one that has always been at the back of my mind.

Marathon runners run at less than the speed they are capable of, because they want to finish the race. It is not about running as fast as you can, for as long as you can and then collapsing on the ground out of breath. It is about running at an optimal pace that gets you to the very end without feeling like a complete wreck and hating the very thought of another race.

The key to balance and a good life is just this : Longer. Not faster. Not harder. Endurance beats speed any day. In the long run, it also beats adrenaline. I admit that adrenaline is a powerful drug, but when it wears out, it only leaves you feeling bleaker than ever( as do all drugs:P). It is absolutely okay to not do as much as you possibly can; in fact, the key is to learn how much of your energy,effort and time you should devote to any particular activity.The answer should never be all, not if you want balance.

I rewrote a major chunk of my personal philosophy book today. One of the first things I promised myself was to write this up as soon as possible and not keep it pending like the other dozen "drafts" on my blog. You can see how little I've written over the past two months, and that itself is a testament to how skewed the balance has been in my life.

I renew those promises I made in Jan, because life is never going to get any less busy. It is never going to be any less demanding. Maybe I'm still being naive, but I believe that the poem has a loophole. Only time will tell if I'm right. :)

Inspired by: https://medium.com/the-mission/an-ambitious-persons-take-on-work-life-balance-i-almost-lost-hope-in-my-marriage-b6f0c0355c2 

P.S: He also talks about the power of compounding, and what he calls the snowballing effect, both of which I haven't touched upon here. An interesting excerpt:

 

"One of my role models for the Snowball Principle happens to be one of my closest friends since high school. Cal Newport and I founded a company together when we were 16 years old. Over the years, one thing I’ve noticed about Cal is that he is incredibly consistent at what he commits to.

Cal wrote his first book while he was in college, and he has devoted a small amount of time to writing almost each weekday since then. As a result, over the last 16 years, he has:

• Written six bestselling books
• Earned a computer science PhD from MIT
• Obtained a tenured professorship at Georgetown
• Become a father of three

But wait, here’s the real cincher: He does all this while consistently shutting off work at 5 p.m. daily and taking weekends off.

I remember being skeptical of Cal’s approach when we were in our 20s. Why not just jump 100 percent into one thing? Why shut down work at 5 p.m. when you don’t have kids and you can fill up that time? I remember Cal once saying that his brain would only allow him to do about five hours of truly deep work per day. The first word that came to my mind was “lazy.”

After seeing Cal’s results compound, I’ve turned from a skeptic into a believer."