For the Joy of It

Dear Reader and Friend,

I left you last time with a wish for moments of laughter and hours of peace. Despite the chaos of the greater world, I hope both reached you in some little way. Unexpectedly, I laughed at myself for a full day while writing an essay to submit to a contest for humorist writers. It’s a writing avenue I’d like to pursue. Please laugh with me over this idea until I write more about it next time! I found peace which turned into joy by listening to an interview with an author who writes about his running journey.

A few weeks ago, while driving home from a weekend in Dayton, Ohio, I listened to Martinus Evans, the author of Slow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run. His approachable no-fuss attitude caught my attention the moment he tied the word joy to running.

“What if running was about joy?” Hmm. Joy is not calculated by time or steps or miles or a finish line. I like this concept.

“Joy in the process.” I find joy in the process of writing, but do I find it in the movement of running? In the past I have. Do I now?

“Have a beginner’s mindset.” Martinus Evans is my kind of person. I am a forever student. And forever stating what Michelangelo declared at age 98, “I am still learning.”

“Sense of joy to move.” I think so. Or do I exercise to check it off the to-do list?

“Leave out comparison.” Absolutely! Theodore Roosevelt said this is the thief of joy.

While I listened to Evans from the front passenger seat while the car whizzed by midwestern soybean fields, bright as saffron, I wondered what my current why is to run.

Evans began running with the hope to shed physical weight. This made me think that people can be weighed down by other things which block the motivation to move. Being a primary caregiver is one. I remember the years I drove back and forth from my home and responsibilities to my hometown, one-hundred and ninety-miles roundtrip, sometimes making the roundtrip in one day every other day, to provide caregiving for my mother. There were many mornings I rallied against my exhaustion to roll myself out of bed and out the door to my retail job where I unpacked and processed new shipment. There were many days when attending a yoga class was the only thing I could get done.

“How was your day?” my husband asked walking in from work.

Accepting his understanding hug, “I made it to yoga class.”

No further explanation needed. It was something.

When I was young, I was athletic but not a runner. Cross country running seemed untouchable. Running relay sprints were intimidating. The idea of being timed while running a mile in gym class was demoralizing. When I laced up my shoes at the age of fifteen to go out for a jog one day because I was bored or lonely or mad at my mother or all three, destination, distance and speed were the furthest things from my mind. I wasn’t attached to anything since it was a time before cell phones, step trackers, and computerized watches.

On a balmy mid-summer Saturday afternoon, I walked out the garage door, up the asphalt driveway, and ran along streets heading north, around the University of Notre Dame, before retracing my steps back home. Who knows how far I ran. Who knows how long it took me. I paid no attention. It felt good to run. It cleared my head. I was sweaty and energized. I had found a friend.

Fast forward but not too quickly, I’ve run seven marathons but not for speed. I ran one Chicago Marathon for the Alzheimer’s Association seven weeks after my mother died, the training schedule coinciding with her three months on hospice. My other five Chicago marathons have been dedicated to the small but mighty Chicago charity, Open Heart Magic, to help support more volunteer magicians perform magic at the bedsides of hospitalized children. The first one I ran for OHM was after one of my son’s received their magical service when he was hospitalized. While training for another, I squeezed my long training runs in while spending nine days with my oldest brother who was laid up in a rehabilitation unit trying to gain enough strength to get back home. Twenty-one years ago, a friend encouraged me to train for my first marathon, the L.A. Marathon, to help me focus on something positive during a time when I did not want to move back out to Southern California.

I can’t rattle off my marathon times for any of these. But I can tell of memorable moments along the courses. There are specific points on the redesigned course of the L.A. Marathon which the year I ran it, took the runners to the furthest point west in the race’s history. I still feel the butterflies in my stomach while I got a glimpse of the glitz running near the border of Beverly Hills. I feel the stillness of those butterflies because of the aftermath of someone’s vomit on the pavement as I ran back toward downtown to finish on Hope Street north of Olympic Boulevard. The caramel of the Snickers bar that salted my mouth when I waited near Union Station to go back to Orange County makes my mouth water now.

In Chicago, the festive energy of the spectators dressed in costumes and confetti in the Pilsen neighborhood remains a perpetual party within me. One year I didn’t know if I would finish the marathon. I was a little tired of my tried-and-true training program, so I tried following a different one. Big mistake. Speed runs were incorporated into this program. I injured myself and skipped several long training runs. But hope! Around Mile 15, the lighthearted Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist of Chicago on West Adams Street helped me add pep to my stride before on the curb near Mile 17, I ran into a life-size pickle who escaped the pickle jar and pushed me forward. When I ran one of my recent Chicago marathons with my high school friend, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to finish because she had a difficult time training. I ironed our names on our shirts anyway and no one said a finisher must run every step of a marathon. In the Northalsted (Boystown) neighborhood, a woman spotted us from her fourth-floor balcony and through her bull horn cheered, “Molly and Marie, you’re f’ing killing it!” By the standards of attaining a stellar marathon time, we weren’t close. By the standards of enjoyment, we were on fire. That electric moment of positivity outweighs the thought of how long it took us to cross the finish line.

After listening to Martinus Evans, I considered my why. Why do I run? Why do I write? Why did my mother cook homemade meals for her family? Why do I read? Why do I try to garden? Why do I walk in the woods? Why do I look forward to sitting on a bench at the edge of a southwestern Michigan forest that overlooks a rolling soybean field every Autumn? Why does my neighbor paint by numbers? Why does my friend Matilda ride her coral electric bicycle with turquoise wheels through the winding prairie path?

For the joy of it!

Whatever happened to doing something for the joy of it like a child?

Evans reminded me that it is the act of running that I enjoy and always have since my first run long ago. My why is because moving at any pace, even if it’s for five minutes, is better than being inactive and allowing weight of any kind to bury my spirit alive. Evans reminded me that I run for my mind and to preserve joy. Since listening to his interview, when I go out for a jog, my goal is to simply move forward without any measurements but a good sweat. It makes me feel a part of his run club.  

When the greater world feels dark; when our impossible feels heavy; when the baggage we think we cannot shed feels it will stay forever, what if we partook in our activities and creativities for the joy of it? Our senses would thrive and encourage someone near us to thrive. And someone else. And someone else. And someone else. What would happen if we gathered these specs of joy as if they were silver dollars that could only be melted and used to polish the world with more joie de vivre?

Hope is being able to see the clarity of this collective joy and believe, in time, it will lift the weight we carry.

I ____________ for the joy of it.

What do you do for the joy of it?

Until I write to you again, I hope joy spreads around you. Every day is a beginning. Rush slowly and be surprised.

Marie