Category: Life

The Broken Bridge

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We can look backwards in time.

Every time you gaze at the stars you are inside a time machine.

The light you see took years – anywhere between four and four thousand – to reach your eyes.

A star that you can see tonight may have exploded thousands of years ago, and no longer exists.  It is gone.  But you can see it.

Intelligent, highly educated people spend their lives studying these things.  Quantum physics.  String theory.  If you Google, “why there is no such thing as touch,” you’ll learn (but like me, perhaps not understand) that there is no such thing.  I thought I was sitting on the couch writing this.  Not quite.  Instead, “when you plop down into a chair or slink into your bed, the electrons within your body are repelling the electrons that make up the chair.  You are hovering above it by an unfathomably small distance.”

At the subatomic level, a particle can exist in two places at the same time.  A measurable thing that exists can be in more than one place at once.

Does any of it matter for any of us?  Arguably not.  Whether we know, or do not know these things, hardly effects our lives.

I do not think about them every day.  I rarely think about them at all.

Why did I think about them today?  Because I was straining for an analogy to help explain the unexplainable.  There is a broken bridge near my home.  Surrounding it are forests, and streams, pathways and fallen trees.  This little clearing in the woods is alive with birds and bugs.  I’ve never seen a bear there, but every time I go, I expect to.  It feels like exactly where a bear should live.  I am drawn to this place. 

In a subatomic world, where I can be in two places at one time, a part of me would always be at the broken bridge.  It exudes peace.  Sometimes I stand on the bridge and hear the water that runs below.  Sometimes, I sit on a log and just listen.  I’ve meditated there.  I’ve walked beyond the bridge and discovered a trail I did not know existed.  The broken bridge is the place where my inner voice yells the loudest, and the broken bridge helps give me the resolve to listen to it.  The broken bridge is the place that I limped to last week, when an old hip injury flared up, and I worried that, not only would I be unable to complete the Vancouver Marathon, but that weeks or months of pain loomed ahead. [I finished the marathon.  And my hip still aches].

When I walked there last week – “layered” is the word that stuck in my head.  The broken bridge and the world around it are layered.  Vibrant greens contrasting with dull greys and browns; chirping birds interrupting pure silence; trees reaching for the sky hovering above dead ones that have yet to fall.  All those things interact with each other.  Infinitely.

The day after the marathon we returned home.  We’d spent three days in Vancouver, in a busy downtown hotel, in a large city.  We were always surrounded by people and noise.  After we got home, I walked to the broken bridge.  I was alone.  The day before, I’d been one of thousands of runners. That morning, we woke up in a city with hundreds of thousands of people.  Hours later, I had the broken bridge to myself. 

The broken bridge always looks the same and is always a little different. It’s magical, like looking into the past, hovering on a couch, or being in two places at the same time.  I see it.  I’m immersed in the beauty.  But I can never explain or fully understand exactly what I’m experiencing and how it makes me feel. 

Your Inner Voice

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Before I became a cop, I was a graduate student at McMaster University.  My studies were going well.  I was on track to complete a doctorate.  Academia was my future.  Teaching and research loomed.  I enjoyed the teaching part.  Less so the research, because the ultimate goal was to write obscure, footnote laden articles and books which only a handful of people would ever read.

As the months ticked by, and I got closer and closer to finishing a Ph.D., my inner voice intervened.  What began as a gentle whisper became a fierce scream.  My inner voice reminded me that I was studying Canadian history and was about to make that my profession, but, I wasn’t passionate about it.  At the end of a day of studying or writing, I would never pick up a book about Canadian history and read it simply because it interested me.  The fire had been extinguished – if it had ever existed in the first place.

There was a raging fire though.  I’d wanted to be a cop for as long as I could remember.  As I came closer and closer to finishing my studies, and my 30th birthday loomed, I realized it was now or never.  Go after the thing I really wanted, or continue along the path I was on.

I went for it.  My friends and fellow students at McMaster were shocked.  They had no idea – none – that another side of me existed.  They had no more envisioned me as a cop, than as the Easter Bunny.

My family was with me all the way.  They knew what I’d always wanted.  They encouraged me to chase my dream.

Maybe it runs in the family.  My dad began his working life as a steelworker in Hamilton, Ontario, working grueling shifts under the inferno of a blast furnace.  He wanted more than that.  He enrolled in teacher’s college, studying at McMaster decades before I arrived there.  He went on to teach elementary school for years.  And then his inner voice became another inferno.  He felt called by God to become a minister.  Teaching had gone well.  He was on track to be a principal, to have a successful career, and a secure pension.  Instead, he listened to his inner voice.  He was true to himself.  And he and my mom sacrificed as a result.  For three years my dad had two homes, spending his weekdays at Knox College in Toronto, and his weekends with me, my mom and my brother in a small town in Ontario where he served as a minister at two rural churches.  My mom and dad must have spent those three years physically and mentally exhausted.  And now, 45 years later, as he nears his 80th birthday, my dad is still a minister, preaching on Easter Sunday, the most sacred day of his year, my mom at his side. 

Some of the strongest memories of my childhood center around Easter weekend.  There was chocolate of course.  An avalanche of chocolate, coloured eggs, and hot-cross buns.  But I also remember the rhythm of that weekend.  Good Friday was a solemn day.  A day of great sadness.  I remember how draining that day always was for my mother and father.  Saturday was anticipation.  Sunday – Easter Sunday, was joy and celebration.  Those memories are forty years old.  Yet the emotions they conjure in me are as real as the glee I saw in my daughter’s face this morning as she hunted for Easter eggs.

Easter weekend remains an incredibly special, even spiritual time for me.  It is always a time for reflection. 

Yesterday, as I ran near our home, over a bridge, I saw water flowing gently on one side, and raging on the other.  Underneath the bridge was a transition point, where smooth water began to churn.  That water reminded me of the inner voice, how it is always flowing within us, and how sometimes it becomes so strong it’s impossible for us to ignore.

For a Moment…

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My daughter is seven. 

I turned seven in 1977. Toronto Blue Jays’ bleacher seats were two dollars.  Jimmy Carter was President.  A soldier who’d fought in World War I and World War II visited our home.

My dad turned 7 in 1950. Harry Truman was President.  The Korean War began weeks after my father’s birthday.

My Dutch grandfather turned 7 in the 1920s.  Born during the Great War, that 7-year-old boy did not know that he would live under Nazi occupation and that his daughter, my mom, would be born as fighting raged around them.

I have no idea when my great-grandparents turned seven.  It must have been in the late 1800s.  I know nothing about them.  They are as mysterious to me as medieval peasants.  Their lives mattered.  And they are invisible to history.

Last year, a friend at work gave me a copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.  A pillar of Stoicism, Aurelius and the Stoics encourage us to recognize and embrace our impermanence.

I think about impermanence daily. I always have.  But becoming a dad heightened that tendency.  Being a dad is like impermanence on steroids.  Every day my little girl grows up a little more and becomes less of a little girl.

She talks a lot.  Like when I’m sitting on the couch, trying to write this.  Part of me, inside, screams in frustration, yearning for silence so I can concentrate.  And yet, every word is precious.  Every silly, nonsensical thing she says, like, “what squishy butt isn’t marshy.”  (The answer is marshmallow). 

Impermanence is everywhere.  Yesterday I found a photo of myself from almost ten years ago.  I looked at it and thought, ‘I look pretty much the same’.  I showed it to my wife and she said, “You look so young!”

A few months ago one of my favourite trails was closed when an old-growth fir tree toppled in a windstorm.  For years, that tree had clung to the side of a hill.  It was massive and precarious, leaning at an angle that suggested it would fall any moment.  It did not surprise me that heavy rain and high winds sent it crashing to the ground.  It may have been hundreds of years old. 

Last fall I planted a sapling in our backyard.  It didn’t survive the winter.

 Marcus Aurelius  wrote, “Our lifetime is so brief … Consider the abyss of time past, the infinite future.  Three days of life or three generations; what’s the difference.”

I’ve gravitated to the trails over the last few years.  In part, it’s because the dirt paths are much gentler on my aging joints than unforgiving pavement.  But there is more to it.  Our forests are a never-ending reminder of impermanence. 

Stoicism invites us to put impermanence front and center in our lives.  To live neither in the past, nor in the future, but in the moment.  It is not a cliché to say that this moment, is all we truly have. 

And yet these moments span generations.  I look at a picture of myself beside the fallen tree and I see an expression I recognize as my father’s in my own face. 

This morning my daughter commandeered a bathroom.  She put a “Keep Out” sign on the door and told us she was turning felt into silk.  She called out for purple and yellow markers, scissors, and tape.  After thirty minutes she emerged and handed me a paper tie to wear when I dress up to go out for dinner tonight.  On the tie she’d written “you are the best dad ever.”

My daughter is seven.  This morning, for a moment at least, I was the best dad ever.  I know that too is impermanent.  A few years from now, a teenage girl may feel dramatically different about her father.

Stoic philosophy reminds me to accept and embrace the reality that trees grow and trees fall.  Daughters are young and silly and daughters grow up.  Dads age, and dads hobble and dads look more like their own fathers.  Each of those moments is all that we have.  And yet, those moments bind us to the past and anticipate our impermanent futures. 

A Perfect Day

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Yesterday I ran for 30 minutes, and my legs felt like they were encased in concrete.

Tomorrow, I have to do a 16-mile run.

Today my legs needed a break.

So, I walked, slowly and alone, on trails near our home.

Not my usual running trails.  For those I head uphill towards the Malahat mountain.  Between logging roads and side trails, I can choose at least a dozen different routes.

But I walked south.  Downhill.  Less choice.  Infinite beauty.

It wasn’t a perfect day for a walk.

It hailed minutes before I left, and rained on me the moment I left the house.  But without the music that usually accompanies me on my runs, I listened to rain pitter pattering on my jacket.  Minutes later the sun came out.  By then I was in the forest.  It was lush and green, and everything shimmered.  The shimmering stopped when the hail came again.  It pelted me before it turned to rain.

It was not a perfect day for a walk.  But if my legs needed the rest, my head needed the space, fresh air, and solitude.  It had been a challenging 24 hours as a dad.  And when I wasn’t focused on parenting, work usually found a way to slip through the cracks of my mind.

Running can be great in those moments too.  But running is different.  Running is always about getting from Point A to Point B and back again.  Running has a physical purpose:  intervals; long and slow; hill repeats.  Even when I’m just out for an easy run, there’s a purpose behind that run.  It’s part of a larger training program.

A walk is different.  There’s no set time.  No exact mileage I need to hit.  I walk to move and breathe and immerse myself in beauty. 

When I run, I barely ever stop.  Stopping defeats the purpose of the run.

Walking is different.  I stop frequently.  At the edge of a cliff, or at the foot of a fallen tree.  I pause near a stream and listen to the water flow.  I step around a damaged bridge and wonder if it fell victim to ice and flooding, or teenagers and booze.

A few minutes after I’ve left the house, my daughter texts me messages of love and nonsense words.  I text back, and when the texts keep coming, I call her, tell her I love her, call her crazy, and say I’ll see her soon.  That wouldn’t happen on a run.   

Sounds, sights and smells are more intense on a walk.  There’s time to absorb them all, instead of running through them.  Walking is peaceful.  It is gentle on the body and gentle on the mind.   

I’m not looking forward to my 16-mile run.  The best part of a long run is finishing it.

I am looking forward to my next walk.  It might even happen later today.  I’ve invited my wife and daughter to come to the bridge with me.

It’s a perfect day for a walk. 

Even Freya

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I’ve never written about Freya. 

She’s young, energetic, and getting fat.  When I wake up before dawn she follows me into the kitchen, meows at the pantry door, and fixates on her bag of cat treats until I open them and shake some on the floor.

Freya climbs up onto the bed and sleeps on my wife’s head.

Freya’s a little scared of my daughter and my daughter’s a little scared of her. 

We’ve had Freya for almost a year.  She makes me smile.  I love her.

But I’ve never written about her.

We live together but she’s on the periphery of my life.  I allot a small amount of my physical and mental energy to her. 

These few sentences may be all I ever write about Freya.

Yet she is a living creature.  In my home.  A creature whose fear when she first came here was so overwhelming, she hid behind a couch for days.  A creature whose capacity for love and attachment is so strong, she follows my wife throughout the house, day and night.

I take Freya for granted.  She adds happiness to my life, for a minimal price.

It’s easy to take things for granted.  Those things, big or small, that together, are the fabric of our lives.

In my last post, I wrote about how I was leaving the homicide unit where I’d worked for years.  I’m gone now.  And people keep getting killed.  The unit is very busy.  I know my friends are stressed and exhausted and giving everything, they have.  I spent a significant portion of my career working with them.  And now that I’m not, I think about them, especially when collectively, they are being pushed to the limits of endurance. 

Careers evolve.  I work with a new team now.  Uniformed officers on patrol in Victoria –  a city of extremes – where beauty and disorder co-exist.  Our team is filled with young men and women who are starting their careers.  They’re talented, enthusiastic and committed to the fundamental precept of policing – helping people.  Our team has veteran officers too – like me, these are cops with decades of experience.  We look at the ‘kids’ and we want them to have fulfilling careers and happy lives.  Their passion for the job is inspiring – it reminds us of why we signed up to be cops, years and years ago.  In turn, those of us who have been around for awhile, hope that the youngsters will benefit from our experience and example.  Maybe some lessons we learned will make things a bit easier for them.

One lesson I’ve learned is the importance of connection. My days, and nights, at work start with coffee.  Three or four of us get together.  We seek out quiet places, although, being in uniform, we always attract attention.  We huddle together around a table.  We laugh, plan the day, debrief things that have happened, talk about stuff that needs to get done.  Some of us have known each other for years.  Even so, this time together, coffee and conversation deepens those friendships.  Not everyone has worked together before.  We’re forming new connections.  Getting to know each other – professionally and personally.  In one breath we’re talking about sick kids.  A moment later it’s the robbery that the entire shift worked on the day before.

Those moments are precious and special.  When I’m at work I miss my wife and daughter.  I want to be with them.  But that time together with my friends and colleagues adds richness and texture to my life.  When I leave policing, those are the moments I will miss.

It’s all too easy to take life for granted.

I started writing this piece a couple of days ago.  This morning I woke up to learn that two members of the Edmonton Police Service had been shot and killed.  Two young men murdered on duty.  That’s seven cops killed across Canada in the last six months.  Murdered for wearing a uniform and doing their best to keep people safe.

Sometimes writing helps me make sense of things.  But there’s no sense to be made of these tragedies.  Good people die and the world keeps spinning. 

My house is chaotic right now.  My daughter is giddy.  A category 5 hurricane ripping through the house.  She’s chasing Freya.  I just heard my wife say, “don’t go near her!”  Category 5 hurricanes don’t respond well to direction.

My daughter is very excitable.  We’re different.  I like quiet.  I’m not a talker.  She’s the opposite of both of those things, even when she isn’t giddy.  To finish this piece, I had to walk away from her and close a door.

I worry that I take her for granted sometimes.  This beautiful, precious child, and sometimes I feel too busy, or too stressed, to just be in the moment with her and give her my attention.  When I choose not to spend time with her, I feel so guilty.  A little girl asks for her dad, and sometimes her dad says no.  Even when I’m doing it I feel awful.  Afterwards, I just want to be with her and throw my arms around her.    

Life happens every day.  The big and the small.  The things that happen to us, and the things that happen to others, hundreds of miles away.  It all affects us.

I feel tremendous sadness for those fallen officers.  For their families.  For their friends and colleagues. My heart is heavy.

And I’m thankful, so thankful, for the love in my life.  My family.  My friends.  Even Freya. 

.

Running with Pain

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A couple days ago, I hit the treadmill hard.  Two and a half miles at almost maximum effort.  It hurt.

There was only one other person in the gym.  A big guy.  Strong and tough.  He was hammering the weights.

Between strides and sets we shouted encouragement to one another.  “Good work,” and “keep it going.”

It was early in the morning.  Still dark and cold outside.  Classic rock boomed. He grunted while he lifted.  I fought to keep pace with the belt spinning below me. 

We were driven and we drove each other.

And we were distracted.  His family had recently been hit by a significant health crisis.  We weren’t talking about it in the gym.  But I bet his mind went there, even when lifting heavy weights.

My mind drifted too.  To a family I know that recently received devastating health news. 

My body hurt.  Not injury pain.  But the pain of significant effort.

When it hurt, I thought about something.  I thought that I could not outrun the pain.  Straining, tensing, groaning, tightening up, did nothing to make me run faster or smoother.  The pain was inherent to the speed – the equivalent of 10 laps of a track at the edge of what I capable of doing.

I thought that I could not outrun the pain.  Instead, I had to run with the pain.  Pain was my companion.  It wasn’t going anywhere.  I tried to breathe smooth.  I tried to run effortlessly.  I imagined that pain was an entity, as real as a person, running beside me.  My new running partner.  Sometimes I let pain sneak ahead, and I tucked in behind it, like pain was leading the peloton and I was letting pain do all the hard work, while I drafted along.

When I was running with pain, I thought, “does the analogy hold?”  When real life hurts – not some meaningless run on a weekday in Victoria – but real pain in real life, can we try and do the same thing?  Can we run with pain?  In real life, pain is rarely two and a half miles in sixteen minutes.  Pain is often days, weeks, months, and years. 

I don’t know if the analogy holds.  But I wonder if it does.  When things are bad, nothing is more prominent than pain.  It dominates.  It may be impossible to defeat.  But maybe we can run with it, beside it, knowing it’s not going anywhere, but also knowing that neither are we.  That when we give maximum effort, and have someone close to us, providing encouragement, that we can continue.  And that we can tuck in behind the pain, knowing it is strong and fast and will take the lead, but we can get behind it and it will pull us forward towards where we are going.  Wherever that might be.

I don’t know if the analogy holds.  When I think back to the hardest times in my life, I don’t know what I did, or how I approached it, other than day by day.  I didn’t name pain or think of it as my companion.  So, I don’t know.

We’re not far from 2023.  I hope to take on some significant physical challenges.  One race or event every quarter of the year that will test my fitness and force me to train to pain.  To push my body so it will grow.  Pushing my body will mean pain.  Fast runs, long runs, and heavy weights.  In that sense, I’ll be inviting pain into my life.  My choice, for events that I choose on dates when I want to do them.  Not real life at all.  But when I feel that voluntary pain, I will imagine that pain is my companion that will be with me for the duration.  I won’t outrun it.  But I’ll stick with it.  Until I get where I’m going.  We’ll get there together.  To those events.  Through those events.  And whatever will be will be. 

That morning in the gym reminded me that running and training and events on the calendar are both crucial and inconsequential.  For so many of us they are integral parts of our lives, yet they’re not really life. 

I emerged from this week with few answers and many questions.  Questions about fairness and good fortune and the unpredictability of it all.  And a question about pain.  Can we run beside it?  Does the analogy hold?

I Used to Watch…

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I used to watch ‘Meet the Press’ every Sunday without fail.  A political junkie, I relished my weekly immersion into U.S. politics.

I used to watch Sunday night baseball on ESPN. The Yankees and Red Sox.  The Cardinals, Dodgers and Giants. Every game was an opportunity to relax, and a reminder of my childhood.  When all that mattered was baseball.

I never watch Meet the Press anymore. The closest I get to it is the fading coffee mug my wife bought me years ago.

Baseball comes in snippets.  Five or ten minutes at most.

Life changes when children come.  That’s normal and to be expected.

However, most dads aren’t 45 when they have their first child.  I had four and a half decades of mostly living for myself.  Doing what I wanted when I wanted. 

That’s not easy to give up.  I have an innate selfishness.  I like to get what I want when I want it.

There’s a reason this blog is titled, ‘Reader, Writer, Runner,’ and not “Political Junkie and Baseball Fan.’  When life required me to prioritize, politics and baseball went out the window. 

Reading, writing, and running sustain me.  They nourish the essence of me.  My aging essence. 

Every day I’m conscious of my age in a way that I wasn’t in my thirties and forties.  There’s a starkness to being in my fifties that doesn’t go away.  I’m reading a book about an ultramarathoner who ran a 50 miler in 2001, weeks after September 11th.  The runner had just turned 60.  Which means, he’s over 80 now, if he’s still alive.

Twenty years doesn’t seem very long ago.  Maybe because September 11th is seared into our collective consciousness.  Twenty years is sobering.  Twenty years from now I’ll be in my early seventies.

Twenty years from now my daughter will be twenty-six years old.  An adult.  Forging her own path, with the confidence and vibrancy of youth.

Now though, she’s still just a little girl.  Instead of watching Meet the Press on Sunday mornings, I watch ‘Come Play with Me,’ a YouTube show about dolls.

Instead of watching baseball, I’m in the park, playing with my daughter.  If there is anything better in the world, I don’t know what it is. 

One of my favourite podcasters, Martin Yelling, talks about the seasons of life.  I love the analogy.  It helps me accept being a slower runner, and a reader who is helpless without his reading glasses.  Time takes a natural toll on speed and eyesight.

Time offers gifts too.  It was a gift that I became a father late in the seasons of my life.  I’m a fifty-one-year-old dad who bought his daughter a book about fairies a couple of days ago.  When I gave it to her, she squealed with absolute and pure joy.

This morning instead of Meet the Press,we may play croquet on our back lawn. Tonight, instead of the Yankees versus the Red Sox, we’ll be at the park.

There isn’t anywhere else I’d rather be.

Nails on the Trail

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The trails near our home are open to everyone.  The backcountry beckons.  I run while others mountain bike, hike or walk their dogs.  Some ride their dirt bikes or quads.  Sometimes when I run, I hear their engines roaring in the distance.  When we cross paths, I breathe exhaust fumes instead of fresh air. 

But the forest and trails are vast and my encounters with motorized vehicles are always fleeting.  I wave or nod to the riders as we pass one another.  We have different interests but a shared love of the outdoors. We mean one another no harm.

I love to run hills.  There is nothing better for the legs and lungs.  And I’m lucky.  I can walk out the front door, and minutes later be doing a grueling uphill workout.  Long and steep it holds the false promise of reaching a peak.  But there’s no summit for a long time, just short breaks, and then more inclines – steep dirt tracks with scattered rocks and boulders.  They’re ideal for trail running.  And motorbikes.  Sometimes I see the bikes themselves.  Usually tire tracks are the only evidence of their presence.  They are loud but my encounters with them while running are rare.  And we can not hear them from our home.  But others must, because this isn’t the backwoods yet.  More like the shared backyard of a subdivision where hundreds of people live.

A few weeks back I was running up one of these short, steep trails when I saw a nail laying on the ground.  And then two nails, and a third and a fourth, seemingly buried in the dirt intentionally, all over the trail.  Each one placed carefully and with malice, guaranteed to puncture the tires of a dirt bike, or a quad.  Equally guaranteed to pierce a dog’s paws or a child’s flesh.

I picked up eleven nails and filed a police report.  I returned a few days later and found at least ten more.  Maybe I’d missed them the first time, buried underneath the dirt and rocks.  Maybe whoever put them there had returned. 

It is in our nature as human beings to hurt one another.  We hurt those we love.  We hurt people we hate.  We hurt people we don’t know.  So, I was not surprised to find those nails on the trail.  Not surprised.  But saddened and angered.  Thankfully, no one was hurt. 

I still run that trail.  I was there yesterday.  I found six more nails.  One was visible, churned up after I ascended, I spotted it on the descent.  I excavated the area and found five more.  I picked them up and added them to the now harmless pile of nails I’ve created inside a nearby concrete barrier. There are thirty nails in that pile now.

Thirty.  Someone carried thirty nails to that trail, got down on their hands and knees, placed them individually along both sides of the trail and right down the middle, and then covered them with dirt and rocks.  That’s cold. That’s premeditated.  That’s malicious.  That’s humanity.

The dark side of humanity. 

We’ve had illness in our family recently.  Metaphorically one of us stepped on a nail on the trail.  That nail was Covid.  It hit hard.  Its effects are still being felt.  Things are improving but not back to normal.  In the toughest days we saw the best of humanity.  A sibling and parents who dropped everything to care for the one they love.  Friends and neighbours coming to the house and offering their medical expertise, bringing soup, dropping off cookies.  Flowers and well wishes arrived from across the country.  We saw the best side of humanity.

The absolute opposite of nails on the trail.

Bury Things Deep

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Sometimes the first time my wife learns about something in my life is reading about it on readerwriterrunner.com. 

When we first met, I told her that I liked to “bury things deep.”  Maybe I was exaggerating for effect.   There’s a difference between burying things, and not talking about them.  I’m very good at not talking.

But I don’t bury them.  To do so would mean hiding them away, somewhere within me – walled off from myself and unexamined.

I’ve seen a lot of death and misery in the last two decades.  Death and misery come with the uniform.  More and more over the last few years, I’ve seen colleagues suffering.  Sometimes one incident is the proverbial last straw and the weight of what my friends and colleagues have seen becomes too much to bear.  Sometimes the one incident is so awful it does it on its own.  For others, there is no one incident, just accumulated suffering.

I’ve learned that when this happens to my colleagues, they are injured – a physical injury as real as a broken leg. 

I’ve learned that this can happen to anyone, at anytime.  And not just first responders and veterans.  The pandemic has made things worse for everyone.

Last week I got a call from a close friend who was going through a tough time.  I don’t think I could have handled the things he has weathered.  He inspires me.  I think he would acknowledge that for many years he buried things deep.  And that part of coming to terms with those things is the opposite of burying them.

There are a lot of ways to shine a little light on dark places.  You’re probably already doing them. 

I read a lot.   I read with a pen in my hand and a journal by my side.  I underline passages that move me and copy some of them into my journal. 

I run.  Almost every day.  Sometimes listening to music that transports me a million miles away.  Sometimes in the stillness of a forest where all I hear is the stream that flows beside me.

I write.  Things I haven’t yet told my wife get posted online for anyone in the world to read. Anyone in the world, including my mom and my ex-wife and my ex-partner.  That’s a varied audience.

I talk.  Sometimes. One of the things I value more than anything in this world is going for coffee with my wife, at least once a week.  We have one or two favourite places.  We sip Americanos.  And I actually talk.  Things that have accumulated throughout the week come out.  And speaking those words, to her, over coffee, always feels good.

I’ve always known how important, reading, running, and writing are in my life.  I knew it instinctively.  I felt it in my marrow.  But I’ve increasingly also come to understand that it is when I read, run, write, and sometimes talk, that I shine light on darkness.  Far from burying things deep, I actually deal with them head on.

Postscript

I thought about some of these things last Sunday as I ran with good friends as part of the Wounded Warriors one day run from Sooke to Sidney on Vancouver Island.  This year’s team is gearing up for their 600-kilometer run from the north island to Victoria later this month.  (As a former member of the team, I was privileged to be able to join them for the one day run).  The funds they raise help first responders and veterans going through difficult times.  Those funds also help their spouses and children.  If you’re so inclined, you can visit Home – Wounded Warrior Run BC (akaraisin.com) to learn more, and perhaps even donate.

Thank you.

Daryl

Aching

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An old injury resurfaced recently.  Hip pain, dormant for almost a decade, flared up.

Except pain isn’t the right word.

It’s an ache.  A deep ache, down to the marrow itself.  An ache that morphs into leg pain and back pain, burrowing itself elsewhere in my body, so that my hip feels fine, even though that injured hip is the source of all the discomfort.

But injured isn’t the right word either.

Because injury and pain go hand in hand. 

Tearing a calf muscle mid-run is an injury – sudden and sharp pain that stops a run dead in its tracks. 

Sometimes trail runners crash to the ground, tripping on camouflaged roots or unseen rocks.  Bones break.  Ligaments tear.  Doctors intervene.  Life changes until injuries heal.

Aching is different.  Aching doesn’t send you to the hospital.  Aching doesn’t stop you from continuing.

Aching comes with options.

Push through.

When my hip aches, and the muscles and joints around it seize up, I continue running.  Because I know I can.  That long dormant ache is a part of me, as real as blood and flesh.  As alive as family and friends.  I know everything about that ache.  I know that I can keep running, and the ache may worsen, but the injury will not.  The ache hurts, and that hurt affects me.  My body tries to compensate.  My gait changes, my strides shorten.  I bend forward.  The ache gets into my head.  Trying to stop me. But I know I can push through, because, it is just an ache.  Going forward will not make it worse. 

Pushing through isn’t always the answer.  Aches must be cared for.  When my hip flared up, I stretched.  Not much, but more than usual.  Every day.  Twisting and contorting my legs and back as much as possible, with a laser focus on targeting that hip.  Using a foam roller to burrow into the joint where the ache lives, and loosen it.  Doing all I could to ease that ache.  Under no illusions that I was making it go away forever.  But knowing that with some love, and care, it would subside. 

A few weeks ago, someone once close to me passed away.  He was a good and decent man.  An honourable man who served his country in wartime, his community in peacetime, and raised a family that loved him to the end.

I hadn’t seen him for several years.

Coincidentally his death coincided with my aching hip. 

On a run last Sunday, as I thought about the difference between “ache” and “pain” I thought about him too.  And I realized the same analogy applied.

His death did not stop me in my tracks, and leave me grief stricken.  It did not injure me to the point of being incapable of going on.  Instead it made me ache inside.  Sadness and sorrow which I pushed through, going about my life seemingly unchanged and unaffected.  Yet the ache was there.  An ache which stretching and foam rolling could not help.  So I tended to it in a different way.  By reflecting on talks and walks, meals and memories.  Being grateful for a life well lived, and a chance to share in that life.

Last Sunday’s aching run was a miserable day. Cold, wet and windy.  I did not want to hit the trails.  But I went out anyway.  Aching.  And while I was thinking these thoughts, the clouds lifted momentarily.  There was a bit of sunshine, and I stopped, and I took a picture.  And then I kept running.  And the ache in my hip got a lot worse.  But it didn’t stop me.  And I made it home just fine.