What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami

This is the 5th book I had read by Haruki Murakami. Not one of my favourites by him but if you read it like a self-help, it could be beneficial. As it’s actually his memoir.

This is still my favourite book by Haruki so far.

The author started long distance running after he ran from Athens to Marathon in Greece for a travel magazine article he was writing at the time. Ironically, the first Marathon was completed by Pheidippides, in reverse, from Marathon to Athens in 490 BC.

He gave a summary account on some of the marathon competitions, from many cities in the world. One of the main themes I noticed in this account of his experience is pain.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

Haruki Murakami

In fact, after years of competing in Marathons in winter and triathlons in summer, he was convinced that pain is the precondition for this kind of sport. No one would even be bothered in taking part if it’s not precisely for the pain.

It’s precisely this pain, and the overcoming of this pain, that we get the feeling of being alive!

Happiness is to feel alive. Through overcoming your pain.

超女

He was convinced that most of what he learnt from writing he had learnt from running. He even described writing as being a kind of manual labour. To be exact, it’s a mental labour.

Some might say if you can lift a coffee cup, you can write a novel. However, he disagreed with that statement completely. He even challenged if you start to get a hand on writing a novel, you will find that it’s not a peaceful job as you had hoped for. You might not be moving your body a lot, but the amount of grueling labour going on in your mind, is both immense and intense.

What qualities do you need in order to write a novel? He came up with three: Talent | Focus | Endurance.

I couldn’t help comparing my experience with the one he accounted at one of his marathon competition. It’s when he kept repeating his mantra whenever he started to struggle:

I’m not a human. I’m a machine. I don’t need to feel a thing. Just keep running.

Haruki Murakami

I’m not a novelist. I run occasionally. But if there’s one thing I do that goes on for hours, it would be dancing.

Are we human? Or are we dancer?

Brendan Flowers

A dance music event usually lasts for 8-12 hours. Some events would go on for days. Once I am into a couple of hours of dancing at a typical event, my fatigue disappears, my mind goes blank, in a state you might even call trance. It is like every movement of my arms and legs become automatic. I’m not a human anymore. I just keep dancing.

Like how the author decided to run and write. I decided to dance because I wanted to. No one asked me to. I just started one day and I kept at it.

This is one of the many cover sleeves for the book.