The title of this blog post comes from a sentence in Haruki Murakami’s book What I talk about when I talk about running.  This book is ostensibly a memoir of his experiences in running but it reveals deeper issues of everyday life. 

A runner will readily be able to identify with the lessons in this book, “Muscles are hard to get and easy to lose.  Fat is easy to get and hard to lose” (p. 50).  Murakami however, does an excellent job taking principles from running and applying them to life.  He talks about the need to focus and direct one’s energies to the task at hand.  He discusses the need for endurance especially when challenges come our way.  And he examines the truth that running involves pain but we must realize that suffering is optional.

The author chronicles that as he was getting older that he was not running as well he did in his early days.  He is about five years older than I am and I felt like I was taking a glimpse into the future.  I’m not as fast as I used to be and in the past a ten mile run was refreshing but now it is tiring.  I am discovering aches and pains that migrate around my body.  I confess that this is a struggle for me.  

As an achiever I want to do better and accomplish more.   If I train harder and work more diligently I should be able to get my 10K time down, but it’s going up – this is difficult for me to accept.  I can identify with the words of the Apostle Paul,

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.  (2 Corinthians 4:16)

I’m not as fast as I once was but we can take heart that the inner man is being renewed.  As Viktor Frankl wisely observed, “Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”  Paul continues,

For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.  (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)

Perhaps you’re facing affliction in your life, remember to keep an eternal perspective.  Although pain is inevitable remember that suffering is optional – may you choose to have an eternal perspective.