Spilled Milk

I have a friend who runs marathons. He started his journey years ago and fell in love with the grind of it. He’s recruited people to run with him, he’s worked hard to achieve fast times, and now he’s training for an ultra-super-mega marathon. That’s not actually what it’s called, it’s just a longer version of a marathon – I forget the real name.

The question he faces now is: “when does it end?” With each marathon completed, each one feels less special. After a super-ultra-mega, why does the normal 26.2 feel so empty?

Well, if you ask him why he runs marathons, he’ll tell you that it gives him a sense of personal achievement. He feels proud of himself for taking on these challenges, especially when looking at where he started versus where he is now.

But it’s not enough. There’s still this feeling of existential dread involved. He thinks to himself: Why am I still doing this? Why did I spend all that time training? I’m doing the right thing. I’m bettering myself.

To be frank, I’m not sure I have an answer for him. This life is very cloudy. It can be hard to judge whether we’re doing the right thing.

Furthermore, who says what the right thing to do is? I like playing video games with my friends. It gives me a social connection to my friends who live in other parts of the country. We share lots of laughs and enjoy each other’s company. Similarly, on the weekends, I go out with my friends. We drink too much and dance and smoke weed and chase after women. Some would say: “Instead of playing Xbox and poisoning your body, you could be going to the gym! You need to better yourself!” True, but would I enjoy it? And would my relationships with my friends suffer? I love these guys, man. Who knows!

I sure as heck don’t know. I try to follow my heart and my head, and make decisions based on what’s important to me. There’s really only three important things to me in my life right now: being a good friend, being a good brother, and being a good son.

If I feel like I’m doing those well, I feel proud of myself. I hope to eventually expand this criteria to include: being a good father, a good husband, a good uncle, a good grandfather. Ultimately, my relationships with the people I love are what defines me.

And I think I’m okay with that. I think.

And for my friend – what makes him happy is what makes him happy. Maybe it’s running marathons, maybe it’s not. Soon I think he’ll enter a period of reflection and decide for himself. I hope he knows that we’re proud of him for even doing it once. And if he never did another one, we’d still be proud, he’d still be our friend, and we’d still love him.