World War II dominates my reading life.  Max Hastings’ sweeping history of the war ‘All Hell Let Loose’ is seven-hundred pages of horror.  Unimaginable suffering for untold millions, brought to life by Hastings with tiny heartbreaking details.  My fascination with the war deepens my gratefulness for the soldiers, sailors and airmen who sacrificed their lives for a just and noble cause.  I don’t know if any of us can truly appreciate the scale of global calamity.  Millions of non-combatants – fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, friends and neighbours – perished, their last breaths often taken in terror and agony.  Those who survived the war, veterans and civilians alike, often buried their suffering deep inside themselves.  The tentacles of their trauma extended deep into their post-war lives, and the generations that followed.  And yet, despite so much individual suffering, collectively they built a better world.

A recent podcast on the Potsdam Conference, the meeting between Churchill, Stalin and Truman which took place in the shattered suburbs of Berlin after Germany surrendered and as Hiroshima loomed, led me to revisit David McCoullough’s incredible biography ‘Truman.’  I first read it over thirty years ago, and the abiding lesson I drew from it was that a good man could be a great man.  Until a few days ago I hadn’t really considered that President Truman and the current U.S. president shared most of a surname – T. R. U. M.  Harry Truman was an honourable, moral man, who made difficult decisions which shaped the post-war world.  Those of us who grew up in peace and prosperity owe much to him, and his fellow Americans who, thrust into a war they did not want, emerged from it committed to playing a leading role in trying to secure a lasting peace.  The current U.S.  president is the antithesis of Harry S. Truman.  Neither good man, nor great man, he is a stain on the legacy of the high office which he holds.  Despite his vile nature and chaotic tenure, the office, not the occupant, still deserve our respect because one day it may again be occupied by a good person who is also a great person. 

Being good is hard work.  McCullough quotes a young Truman writing to his future wife Bess: “[I am] just a common everyday man whose instincts are to be ornery, who’s anxious to be right.”  One of my favourite podcasts is called, ‘The One You Feed.’  It’s premise, based on a parable, is that there are two wolves inside us all – a good wolf, and a bad wolf.  A grandson asks his grandfather which wolf wins.  The grandfather responds, “the one you feed.”  My good wolf and bad wolf battle daily.  My bad wolf screams at my daughter, when stress and frustration boil over.  My bad wolf feasts on anger which lives within me, never far from the surface and all too willing to make an appearance, especially when a stranger offends my sense of right and wrong.  Just over a week ago my bad wolf unleashed a verbal tirade on a cyclist riding on a sidewalk while my family walked beside me.  My bad wolf chooses immediate pleasure over long term health.  When unleashed, it gorges on junk food.  Once I start, I’m incapable of moderation. 

Reading helps feed my good wolf.  David Brooks’ ‘The Road to Character,’ is beside me as I write this – each chapter an examination of the life of an imperfect person who worked to better themselves.  As Brooks writes in the introduction, “I wrote this book not sure I could follow the road to character, but I wanted at least to know what the road looks like and how other people have trodden it.”  I fill my journal with quotes from books laying around the house, or posts from social media – wisdom from secular Buddhists, Stoics, C.S. Lewis, and endurance athletes.  I feel instinctively that every word I absorb, and then rewrite, brings me a little closer to universal truths. One of those universal truths is that my bad wolf is just as much a part of me as my good wolf.  I can observe my bad wolf without judging it.  Ultimately, taming my worst instincts means trying to understand my bad wolf and showing it love, compassion, and understanding. 

Reading, writing and running help tame my wolf and cleanse my soul.  Reading means absorbing the experiences and wisdom of others.  Reading about the war puts my own problems and stresses into perspective.  Reading lifts me.  A beautifully written passage in any book is a work of art that becomes part of me.  If reading is a process of absorbing, then writing and running are processes of expending.  I’m a private person, usually reluctant to share details of my life with people I don’t know well, yet I pour inner thoughts and feelings onto the page and publish them.  And it feels right.  Running always feels right, even when it hurts.  Sometimes especially when it hurts.  Years ago, when I was going through a difficult time, I ran until it hurt, and my inner voice repeated a mantra over and over, “burn away the hurt, burn away the pain.”  In those circumstances I sought pain to erase pain.  But that was, and is, very rare.  Running, day by day, month by month, year by year, has been like a purge valve that imperceptibly lets out noxious fumes that I might not even know are present.  A little over a year ago I retired from policing after twenty-four years.  I was blessed to retire with physical health and mental health.  I owe much of that to running.  Thousands of plodding miles where my body and brain processed what I had seen or done at work and left the poisonous byproducts behind on roads and trails.

Running.  Good for the soul.  Not always for the body.  Every day I do an inventory of what hurts most.  My right heel almost always wins, but my left heel and right knee are occasionally contenders.  Somehow, my right elbow has now joined the fray.  Still, I plod on with the goal of not plodding.  I’ve set an aggressive but realistic time goal for this fall’s Royal Victoria Marathon.  Which has meant weekly speed sessions at a track for the first time in well over a decade.  Running fast for short distances sucks.  Legs and lungs burn.  In the hours before I leave for the track my bad wolf whispers, “take this week off.  You’re busy.  You’re tired.  You can skip a workout.”  But I’ve made it every week so far.  At the track, during the sessions my bad wolf screams, “slow down!  Less hard means less hurt.”  I listen and try not to obey.  To run hard and fast, I must force my bad wolf to run with me. 

What a privilege it is to run.  To read.  To write.  To do battle with a wolf and not an enemy soldier.  To grow up in a world shaped by imperfect men and women who did their best.  To draw on the examples they set about how to live good lives and shape a better world.  To know that good and right can triumph over evil and injustice.

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Postscript

Having not written in some time this piece was an exercise in returning to fundamentals.  Reading.  Writing.  Running.  A recent photograph from my phone usually accompanies each essay, as is the case today, with a photo I accidently took several nights ago.  I hadn’t seen it until just now.  I’m not sure what it is or how I took it.  Maybe it was a fortunate mistake, with bright light shining over darkness.