State of Rest

I have been running for close to twenty years. Not continuously as the sentence seems to imply. Although that would have been a wonderful life – another life.

Certainly in the last ten years, any rest, implying a break from running has been if I have fallen sick. Holidays, business travel, even the Covid time has given me the opportunity to carry on training, thanks to amenities like the treadmill or parks or a running track or friendly runner guides in cities like Venice. I would have never imagined that running through canal streets, squares, tiny lanes, and up and down all manner of bridges could be so wonderful. I felt that I had the whole city to myself watching the sun rise in the distant Adriatic Sea. And fortunately I have had this luck around the world, from my beloved Delhi to the savannahs in Africa.

Considering my present break from running is once again because of ill health, it is perhaps a moment for me to reflect on this instead as a state of rest. That I am at peace with this fact. That I feel that instead of missing running, I am simply not running. Running is here. Right here where it has always has been.

That genuine shift in thinking and realisation makes me feel calm and embrace this state of rest.