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