I’m learning a little about Stoicism.
Derren Brown’s “Happy – why more or less everything is
absolutely fine” is a pitch for leading “The Considered Life”. It was
recommended, repeatedly and with uncharacteristic gusto by a fellow introvert.
The by-line at once delighted and appalled me. I haven’t finished it yet, but he’s
building a convincing argument for the value in taking control of our emotional
reactions to uncontrollable events and then accepting, even embracing the
uncontrollable nature of life . This idea is appealing when you’ve lost control
before, conversely though, I fear it could foster suppression and impose a rigidity
onto the human condition that just wont fit, regardless of will. The stoic ideas
have hit me though, and particularly in relation to fell running.
Perhaps Jura was a congregation of stoics. Arranged together
on the start line in the rain, eager to go and practice their responses to those
unknowable events crouched waiting for them in the clag-shrouded scree above.
This famous old race, the pilgrim-like journeys to it are maybe unspoken
celebrations of stoicism and human resilience, a communal reaffirming of the
fact that we are not just alive, but living. Despite what went before.
Brown talks extensively of stories, and of storytelling
being the defining human characteristic. This resonates, and thinking back over
all the times people have asked why I run in the mountains I wish I’d had this
answer. We are storytellers, and every time we line up together below those myth-like
mountains we are reinforcing the story we have written for ourselves. The
positive story that we want so dearly to define our lives, the one where we
didn’t crumble, where we were the hero.
Resilience comes with practice. The strength we form in the
mountains, as we overcome physical and mental challenges is not separable from
that required to face real life. Challenges we don’t choose are infinitely
harder to face than those that we do, but the attitudes that we forge in the
fells do guide us, they are directly
transferable. The mountains extend into our lives in ways we don’t immediately
see, when I really try and picture what it is inside me that feels strong, it
looks like scattered mountain rock and brooding mist, long grass bent in the
wind, it’s an abstract picture of a lifetime in love with high places.
Completing Jura continues my story, it acts as a milestone,
a reassuring trig point that I’ve patted on my way through the cloud. It was
the hardest running experience I’ve had. Incessant boulder scree, unrelenting
steep climbs one after another, cold, wind, rain, and most of all a lack of
familiarity. This wasn’t the Lake District anymore, and when a group of us got
lost on a steep mountain side with boulders rolling like footballs away into
the mist, I did get very anxious. We descended too far and had an extra long
climb to the last checkpoint, adding almost an hour to the ordeal. Now I was
exhausted, to the point where some of my steps lacked the strength to succeed. Slowly
though, I did progress, recalling advice I’d once read to “just get your head
down and wait for the top to come”, then later, as the top refused to come,
remembering Joss Naylor’s beautiful summation of the mental side of fell
running “Don’t think about it, if you thought about it you’d lie down”.
The retelling of Jura is where the joy lies. Because I did finish, and as I descended from the
clouds towards the road, and the sweet smell of May in the verges, I felt an
overwhelming sense of satisfaction. My story was to continue and the pain and
suffering over the last six and a half hours was lying neatly in a box with a
ribbon and a bow on it. The person I am after that experience is a little
stronger, a little hardier, slightly more prepared for those uncontrollable
events around the corner. I used to think strength was a finite resource, I
agonised over this and at times saw myself stood naked before the vast starless
skies that lie ahead. I now believe the opposite, strength multiplies and
develops the more it is drawn upon. The future contains pain, that’s without
doubt, but like the stoics we can choose how we feel and furthermore we can train
for it.
On the run back along the road I saw an otter slicing its
v-shape into the calm waters. Everything was grey, and the stench of rotting
seaweed menaced me with the threat of vomit. Gulls took off and landed on the
outcrops, blackbirds scalded from gardens, my hands were cold and swollen and a
dull ache spread across my shoulders. So much beauty, so much pain. They come
as one.
