four and a half years ago, I read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. To me, it flowed like good poetry. A meditative excursion on aging (and on running, of course). I wrote about it here.
The book was published in 2007, which puts Murakami in his mid to late fifties at the time of writing the memoir.
Well, I'm not quite there yet, but I went for a run tonight and, for the first time, I could experience the book. What four years ago was solely contemplation turned into something a lot more palpable, something like recognition.
Recognition that, not only the two miles that I ran tonight, but all the other runs I've completed in the last year have been a full level slower (and shorter) than what I was doing at the turn of the decade.
Here's Murakami:
"Just as I have my own role to play, so does time. And time does its job much more faithfully... And one of the privileges given to those who've avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old."
Thank God I hate running.