The Will to Power, the Will to Run.

I mentioned in a previous post how I am beginning to crave my runs rather than dread them.  This craving has evolved into a need that is worryingly intense, and it is no longer just the endorphins or the taste of oxygen that I beg from my run.  It is the limitless challenge of it.  So limitless, in fact, that yesterday I thought 9:30pm was a great time to get on the road.  Yet, I wasn't wrong.  There's something about the crisp night air that's almost dangerous, seductive in its quiet, mysterious charm with a clear, starry sky.  What's more, it is always worth the tired legs the following day, because my average pace is a good 20 seconds faster per kilometre out of the sheer thrill of it.  But, this is beside the point.  The real beauty of running at night is the somewhat surreal nature of it, and the space for contemplation it affords.  Alone and free, the night stretching before me, I asked, "how much further can I go?  How much faster?"  and I realised, pacing somewhere along Hampstead road, how much of a narcissistic process sport can be.  It is a constant source of achievement, a satisfaction of ambition and a reason to view myself, if only for an hour a day, as a totally competent individual.

Now, in order to avoid trivialising running by stating, "it's just a way of satisfying the human ego", I will seek to bring Friedrich Nietzsche into the equation for a more complex view.  His doctrine around the Will to Power - Wille Zur Macht - pertains not to a will to domination, as the English translation of the German 'macht' suggests.  Instead, it is rather a will to ability, to knowledge and to truth.  Nietzsche saw that "a living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength - life itself is will to power" (Nietzsche, 2008) and henceforth the force behind all human thought and action.  When we remember the Will to Power as equivalent to a will to truth, we are brought to question, how is it that we define "truth"?  Nietzsche provides his genius here, too, in explaining it as that which is "True" from the "standpoint of feeling -: that which excites the feeling most strongly ("ego")".  Furthermore, "the feeling of strength, of struggle, of resistance convinces us that there is something here being resisted." (Nietzsche, 1968)

Let's pause for a minute.   What we have established, quite basically, is that our understanding of truth belongs to how we feel towards something - how our ego responds - and actually, the only honest truth we can know is in our own sensory response (for more on this, see Martin Heidegger's writings on "truth").  When we feel a sense of resistance to our will, we are further convinced by the reality of a feeling because, as previously stated, it is that which "excites" the ego most strongly.  Here, we begin to recognise the Will to Power at work and, just so, Nietzsche writes that "the criterion of truth resides in the enhancement of the feeling of power" (Ibid.). To overcome this resistance is to overcome a part of ourselves, and finally, we see why I've drawn this absurd link between a 19th Century German philosopher and my running shoes.  I like to think of the resistance in my muscle fibre, in my will to sprint the last half kilometre of my run, as evidence of my own Wille Zur Macht.  As a driving force, it is by its very nature an active, forwards-moving motion that stems from the root of our need to establish what is "true".  What is running, if not this?  Is it not asking, "what is it I am capable of" while desperately pulling air into your lungs?

Nietzsche, F. (2008) Beyond Good and Evil.  Wilder Publications, Radford. p.16
Nietzsche, F. (1968) The Will to Power. Translated by Kauffman, W. and Hollingdale, R.J.  ed. Kauffmann, W. Vintage Books, London. p.290

The Catharsis of Theatre

"It is the lot of humankind to be locked in constant conflict with instinctual nature while at the same time endeavouring to take account of the desires and conflicts of others. Thus, many people find solutions that do not require analysis. They use the conflicts of the past, creating healing dreams and actions, rewarding relationships, intense and lasting love, and sometimes sublime works of art that bring as much joy to the creator as to those who behold them. These people already know that, in spite of suffering, life is a creative and continuing adventure to all ages. On the other hand, those who have immobilised and muted many of the plots and players in their internal theatre, allowing them no action but to hammer on the walls of the mind, might learn to value the words of Sartre (1965, p.37): "If you want your characters to live, then liberate them!"
McDougall, J. (1986) Theatres of the Mind. Free Association Books Ltd., London. p.16

Running and the Waste Land.

Finally, it is getting to the point where if I miss a day of running, I long for it.  Yesterday was that day, and I just felt like something vital was missing.  And it wasn't like I'd forgotten to pack a lunch or to post a letter or something - not anything I could blithely put off until tomorrow or find an alternative solution to - I was missing a fundamental part of my day: now, arguably, my favourite part of the day.

It used to be that when I thought of running, I felt the lactic acid in my legs and the pain in my chest even before I'd gotten out of bed.  I would think to myself, "Well surely there can be nothing worse I could get out of bed for" but now, my first thoughts are of blue sky, oxygen, smiling at fellow runners along Regent's Canal and my grand, self-gratifying sprint finish at the end.  And I'm not sure what has changed.  Is it the weather?  My new trainers?  A new level of fitness?  In the past I have known exactly why I was running, whether it was to lose weight, maintain general fitness or, most recently, in a battle against the numbness of depression.  Confusingly, now that I have no definite reason to be lacing up my trainers and plugging into my Nike running app (it's free and brilliant) I am even happier to be out there and, ultimately, evermore perplexed.

I've read a stream of articles asking "why do we run?" and am glad to see that I am not alone in being incapable of answering this question.  In my opinion, the closest we've got to the essence of it is Adharanand Finn's book Running With the Kenyans (a brilliant read even if you have no interest in running).  After reading it, what made me put my trainers on and dart out into one of 2012's few days of sunshine was the impression that there's just something innately right about running.  It's in the bounce of your feet, the inward and outward breath, the swing of your arms.  It feels like it harks from some primal survival instinct and living in Central London, I desperately yearn for any reminder that I am in fact human.  In any city or town it is easy to become blurred with the tube, the bus, your computer or coffee machine and although these are stunning examples of the evolutionary capabilities of man, we should not be mistaken for likewise inorganic matter.  Without spiralling into too much of a digression here on the effects of Modernism I will briefly turn to T.S Eliot, who described this outlook accurately in his 1922 poem, The Waste Land:

"Unreal city

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet."

In Eliot's poem I wish that the 'Sighs, short and infrequent' could refer to a herd of marathon runners, his eyes fixed 'before his feet' out of exhaustion, willing himself to keep going.  But, I think it is fair to say that the 'unreal city' alone is exhausting enough.  Indeed, enduring the inhuman demands of the modern day is plenty reason to sigh and stare through the brown fog.  Somewhat akin to this, the reason I didn't get to run was simply that I was too busy.  I walked home in the evening and watched as the clock on King's Cross Station moved from 9:05pm to 9:10pm, slowly and tauntingly.  I stood still at a pedestrian crossing, my legs twitching to bob up and down, yearning for my hair to be sticking out on end with sweat on my forehead and flushed red cheeks.  I wanted the coolness of air in the back of my throat, the emptiness of thought in my mind and the happy quickness of pulse.  I wanted to dart across that road, different to any other pedestrian, leaving them behind in full knowledge that I was enduring something sensational.

Now, a lot of people tell me that running is actually bad for you.  These are the same people who don't eat carbohydrates, fats or sugars and only lift weights for 30 minutes a day because should you dare to work out for a second longer, your muscle will devour itself and the Universe will implode.  In light of this nonsense I tend to retort that it depends on your technique in running: without going into great detail here, there are certain styles that are proven to be better for your joints and muscles.  To this one friend then replied, "Well actually, cardio-vascular exercise is bad for you full stop" and I couldn't help but think...when is anything going to be good for us?  And, furthermore, when will we stop having the true requirements of our bodies dictated to us?  If the future of fitness and well-being is synchronised dumbbell lifting in set reps to a strict time, we are just as doomed as the crowd in T.S Eliot's poem.  For me, running evokes freedom.  It is the primal urge to live that we are so often lacking in the rest of our lives that I hope, unlike everything else, is never taken too seriously.

Henry James' View of London Theatre

"But by 1877 the writer Henry James could write of the London audience: 'It is well dressed, tranquil, motionless; it suggests domestic virtue and comfortable homes; it looks as if it had come to the play in its own carriage, after a dinner of beef and pudding.'

Andrew Davies, (1987) Other Theatres: the Development of Alternative and Experimental Theatre in Britain.  Macmillan, Basingstoke. p.27