“Up the levee. Five miles, ten miles, fifteen miles. Winter or summer. I went with him one Christmas morning I remember. Mile after mile and all of it just the same. Same old brown levee in front, brown river on one side, brown fields on the other.””
I have a theory that human beings have a tendency towards conflict – that without a manageable quantity of conflict, life would never feel complete.
Here is a graph that illustrates my theory, where the optimal amount of happiness-maximizing conflict is not zero:
Many instances of human behavior and preferences seem to illustrate this theory – our absorption in a thrilling action movie, our love for adrenaline-pumping roller coasters, or even our passion for watching competitive sports. These activities tap into an instinctive, primitive part of the brain. They offer an escape – an electric jolt of excitement that the monotonous drone of modern life fails to provide. Yet in all of these experiences, safety is assured. We know that none of these moments of stress are truly permanent or, in another sense, truly real. The pain and conflict they evoke are temporary and contained, superficial and governable.
Solvable conflicts hence give life meaning. I call this my Theory of Resolvable Conflicts: conflict reveals to us the beautiful fragility underscoring life itself. Controlled instances of pain stand out like neon paint on the white piece of cloth that is our boring lives, and this juxtaposition makes us realize that we are alive. There is no better feeling than feeling alive, and as such, we hunger for resolvable conflict.
The book we’ve been reading this week, The Moviegoer, perfectly captures my theory in action. The novel follows the journey of Binx Bolling, a 1960s New Orleans stockbroker, as he embarks on a search for life’s meaning. This quest draws him into a variety of pursuits – from engaging in fleeting love affairs to seeking excitement in films. Binx describes his search as “what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life,” a desire to “be onto something” beyond the mundane. In many ways, his yearning for meaning drives him to seek experiences that disrupt the monotony of daily life. His search, in essence, encapsulates the hunger for resolvable conflict that I am describing.
In my own life, too, I seek resolvable conflict through running. Growing up, I loathed the exercise. I hated the feeling of sweat running down the sides of my face and seeping into my clothes and hair. I hated the feeling of dragging my feet with every step as I embarrassingly stomped down the streets like an elephant. At some point, though, my relationship with running changed. I could still feel my heart pounding with exhaustion when I ran, and I could still feel my body burning with heat as my breath shortened – yet I came to love running for the way it made me, and everything around me, feel so real. Running emerged to me as a point of collision between a search for profound meaning and an embrace of the ordinary.
In fact, running is so mundane that it transforms the world around you into something that is not. When I run, the scenery starts to roll past me like rear projection in an old movie, as a car breezes past a whimsical backdrop. The cypress trees blend into a giant mass of green, and the Mississippi River blurs into a smooth surface as I cruise down the riverbank.
Running amplifies the sensations of life. I feel as if my life is not my own but that I am looking at what it could’ve been if everything had been a movie. The director has purposely chosen to film this shot from the point of view of the character that is me, bringing organic movements and unstable shakes to the camera to accentuate this subjectivity of experience. Even the sound quality seems enhanced. The humdrum nature of the run itself and the growing fatigue crawling up my body force me to turn my attention to all the people and all the things around and beyond me. I can see sheepish teenagers reluctantly taking a photo of their excited, lovey-dovey parents. I can see elderly couples holding massive Styrofoam boxes filled with aromatic shrimp po-boys and gumbo. I can hear the loud honk of the steamboats and feel their obnoxious flute tunes creep up on my nerves. I can see love locks and Mardi Gras beads clinging to the metal railing of the dock in an eternal embrace.
As I wrap up my runs, moreover, a feeling of invincibility and infinity always washes over me. In these moments, when I am drenched in sweat and my legs hum in soreness like worn-down machinery, I can feel the world brimming with dynamism. Running sharpens my senses and makes me acutely aware of the life that is within and around me. The ground beneath me is solid. The air is palpable with every breath. The glow of the Crescent City Connection casts shifting images onto the dark waters that prance as if they are shivering.
I feel like I can do anything. Nothing can touch me. In the comforting drone of the night, music still rings and lights glitter. After a run, everyday problems seem weightless and powerless. The physical ache lingering from the run stands in stark contrast to daily stressors – homework, essays, job searches, responsibilities – rendering worry about them almost absurd. They become ghostly itches, scratching faintly at the surface of my being, unable to reach my soul or even leave a mark on my body. They are just a background buzz.
The world has returned from a film into reality, in which I am a real person free to make my own choices, intertwined with everything that happens around me and everything that I can feel, touch, and grasp. The world pulses with wonder and life. It is a beautiful enough place just to exist in and walk through, and the possibilities are so endless. Running kind of provides me with a sense of purpose standing parallel to Binx's in the end of The Moviegoer: maybe purpose is found through experiencing the mudane and facing it with courage, maybe its about enjoying a run towards no particular destination, but admiring all the beautiful things and people you are lucky enough to have by your side along the way.