What I talk about when I talk about running
Throughout the book, there is a pervasive sense of aging.
Regarding the passage of time and the decline of physical ability, there is a sense of helplessness.
Unlike resisting and refusing to accept old age, the author gradually accepts this fact and uses it as a rule to deal with.
Many questions that I am curious about, the author has also reflected on and delved into more deeply.
This is probably:
I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself.
I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next day’s work goes surprisingly smoothly. I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that. To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects.
I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring.
I ran a bar, so I learned the importance of being with others and the obvious point that we can’t survive on our own.
The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky.
It’s precisely because people are different from others that they’re able to create their own independent selves.
I had to give it everything I had. If I failed, I could accept that. But I knew that if I did things halfheartedly and they didn’t work out, I’d always have regrets.
I only began to enjoy studying after I got through the educational system and became a so-called member of society.
We’d closed the club, so we also decided that from now on we’d meet with only the people we wanted to see and, as much as possible, get by not seeing those we didn’t. We felt that, for a time at least, we could allow ourselves this modest indulgence.
It was my real schooling. But you can’t keep up that kind of life forever. Just as with school, you enter it, learn something, and then it’s time to leave.
I’m struck by how, except when you’re young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.
In other words, you can’t please everybody.
Life just isn’t fair, is how it used to strike me. Some people can work their butts off and never get what they’re aiming for, while others can get it without any effort at all.
It suits me. Or at least because I don’t find it all that painful.
The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.
while they’re getting by on these, they may actually discover real, hidden talent within them.
I’ve always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I’m wrong, but I won’t change.
My own individual, stubborn, uncooperative, often self-centered nature that still doubts itself—that, when troubles occur, tries to find something funny, or something nearly funny, about the situation.
This takes time, of course, but sometimes taking time is actually a shortcut.
Translated by gpt-3.5-turbo