How To Run Again

a reminder of life

How to run again

Pick up your shoes and do not think. The most important thing is not to think. The fear lives in the thinking. One must of course be properly fueled. Which may require thought. So fuel, with thought, then turn off the thinking. Put the shoes on, and go. It does not have to be fast. It does not have to look pretty. You don’t have to run a certain distance. You just have to run.

At the bar, sitting outside in the alleyway just behind me was a gentleman with his group of friends. He was reading. He was reading through Quran. As I turned form a conversation that suddenly no longer needed me, we struck up a conversation and I was struck by its simplicity. I was struck by its depth. He told me he was reading the Quran - in a bar - because he found islam to be the religion that carries the most wisdom, and though he does not subscribe to organized religion, he felt its impact all the same. Buried, perhaps for this exact purpose, in the bag I had yet to fully unpack was my copy of The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak. I gave it to him. I told him what my name meant. I reminded him that God is with us. That God is within us. And he shook my hand, he told me what his name meant. He told me that he is the son of the red earth. And being from a land of red earth myself, where I can hear that pattering of long lost cousins’ feet, where I can see my brother’s smile in my grandmother’s doorway, we were one in that moment. I was reminded of one of the forty rules myself, in meeting him: “When a true lover of God goes into a tavern, the tavern becomes his chamber of prayer, but when a wine bibber goes into the same chamber, it becomes his tavern. In everything we do, it is our hearts that make the difference, not our outer appearance. Sufis do not judge other people on how they look or who they are. When a Sufi stares at someone, he keeps both eyes closed instead opens a third eye — the eye that sees the inner realm.”

I will leave you with that.

x

TC