People often refer to meditation or running as an escape, and I suppose you can “escape” through either activity. But what do we mean by “escape”? Are we being held prisoner? What, exactly, are we escaping from? When I run or meditate — stripped of reading material, the television, music, the Internet, and pretty much all other manufactured diversions — I’m forced to confront my boredom, my minor aches and pains, my little string of daily mental worry beads. It’s all there with me as I run or sit. I suppose I could run or sit with music, but all of my little anxieties would still be there, patiently waiting for the music to end.
As highly concentrated activities, running or sitting can help us confront the things we’re trying to escape from — and realize we can’t really escape from anything. Then the question becomes: How do we deal with this vaguely uncomfortable messiness that is our life? Are we free, or are we prisoners trying to escape? Running and sitting can make an exploratory journey into those questions possible, and they’re very necessary questions. Of course, then we have to realize the answers. Which is the work of a lifetime.
