My good friend and running partner Amit Ojha once told me that learning should happen in middle age. That is when true interests burgeon and come to life. That school and college was wasted on the young. His reasoning was that there is a heightened awareness in your 40s that does not exist before.
Well I don’t know about the wasted part but I do agree about the middle age part. If you’re one of the lucky few who can make learning a lifelong experience, that is indeed a jackpot existence. What does this have to do with today’s intervals?
On one hand, not much. On another, everything. I have an acute awareness today that I seem to have been oblivious to before 2014. Such awareness is mine alone. Acute for one, might still be opaque and foggy for another. There have been hundreds of pitfalls that perhaps could and should have been avoided if there is indeed such heightened awareness. But again these are life’s ways. At least mine. Perhaps pitfalls and downsides are inevitable. Perhaps it is the small joys that are instead magnified.
So when I run today, and hit the road or the track, the awareness of the activity is not just in the doing but that such awareness magnifies everything: this is happening today, now, cannot be replicated and will always be different before and after. There is a sense and feel about the breathing that didn’t exist beforehand. I also agree that some of these might sound like useless existential drama. So be it.
I also know that I am unaware of many things. Like the tree in the roundabout that only got my attention yesterday because of a fellow runner. Yet it seems to me that I am aware like I haven’t been before. Of these runs, these steps, this pace, this activity. There are enough runs – I am certain – where parts of them go blissfully unaware – it is impossible for me to suggest that awareness exists in every minute. That would drive me crazier.
Well Amit and I don’t run much together anymore – such is life’s ways – but I would always call him and Maneesh my running partners.
So yes Amit, learning and awareness does hit a high in middle age. You taught me that.
Writing about Running 