#lucyeasthope — Public Fediverse posts

Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: the essence of running, and a metaphor for life

People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they’ll go to any length to live longer. But I don’t think that’s the reason most people run. most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life – and for me, writing as well. I believe many runners would agree.

What I talk About When I talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami pg 82-83

Life is uncertain. What comes next is uncertain. But knowing that sharpens the mind into narrow focus. My biggest lesson of all, relearned once again, these last two years? That there is no guarantee of tomorrow. All you ever have is today. Be acutely aware of the time limits placed on you and allow that to focus you. Trust me that minutes are precious. There is no other way to live now but alongside the uncertainty, and with great delight.

Come What May: Life-Changing Lessons for Coping With Crisis, by Lucy Easthope pg 258

#eudaimonia #LucyEasthope #mortality #running

The Covid-19 pandemic as a social mechanism driving biographical change

This line from Lucy Easthope’s new book (pg 4) reminds me of the paper I never finished about Covid-19 as a reflexive imperative in Margaret Archer’s sense i.e. an event to which everyone has no choice but to respond, even if those responses might differ in dramatic ways:

The long, difficult years of the coronavirus pandemic and the global lockdown showed that disasters don’t just happen to other people. Every one of us experienced the pandemic differently and with different types of loss. But all of our lives were bent out of their normal shapes by something over which we had no control.

In this sense I think we need to see it as the immediate context for pretty much anything micro-social* we examine in our present circumstances. There’s a deeper sense of disruption she describes on pg 36 which was less evenly distributed through the population:

Most people will experience unwanted change or loss at some point int heir lives. Sometimes it will feel very surmountable, but at other times it will divide our lives into the time before and the time after. This can be true of events, but it can also be true of feelings and relationships. You can forget that help and allegiance and ways to get through are out there, that there is light in the dark.

*Macro-socially too, but in a different way.

#Covid19 #crisis #disaster #LucyEasthope #pandemic #postPandemicCivics #reflexiveImperative