Billings, MT

Billings Bench Water Association Canal

Run time: 59:36 + 2-minute kick

Hello, Sunshine. Hello, Warmth. Hello, Montana. Who knew I would have to go to Montana to find warm weather? We have had the odd semi-warm day in Michigan this “Spring,” and we have seen the sun a few times, but this was a glorious change.

I found this run just a block or so away from the hotel. I could see a dirt road running along the canal on the phone map. It cut behind some businesses, and when the canal crossed a road, I saw a bicyclist going the other way on a similar dirt road on the other side of the canal, so I hopped over there. Then I continued west, and it was a perfect route. Soft dirt/sod, no one around, beautiful scenery, a mixture of sun and shade, mild inclines and declines – everything you want in a trail run.

You can challenge the merits of dedicating 30% of your life to work, and I do continually when I am on the road, but the merits of a serendipitous run go a long way to mitigating the indignities of selling one’s time and effort for money. That, plus driving through the river valleys of Montana on glorious sunny days, can sprinkle a little meaning on the emptiness of capitalism.

As one gets closer to the end of the prime of one’s life, one tends to become keenly aware of the preciousness of time. I am fond of saying that there is nothing we have more of than time, because everything else we have must fit into the time that we have. Therefore, it is by definition the thing of which we have the greatest amount, and yet we have less every day, every hour, every minute, every moment. That I am spending this precious half-hour posting this blog post that few, if any, will read, is a poignant example of the sometimes cruel reality that only the tiniest fraction of the time we have will be spent on activity with value and meaning. This blog post has value and meaning to me, but not to the universe. IMHO.

My schedule is what one might call packed. I have thousands of podcasts episodes in my listening queue, to fill time between other activities. I have a few hundred books on my library e-shelf, to read during meals and visits to the bathroom. I am a creature of habit, scheduling daily reminders for tasks, affirmations, appointments, and activities. To keep from procrastinating or giving up, I try to act without thinking. Just write when the reminder to work on the novel comes up. Just pull out the guitar when the reminder to practice comes up. Just run when the reminder to run comes up.

It all has value to me, or at least, I have convinced myself that it does. Will it matter, when I die, all of the experiences I have accumulated? No, I think not.

But I suppose that experiences are not accumulated. You pass through them, or they pass through you, or both. No one holds on to an experience. Memories are accumulated, but memories are not experiences. We could say that one of the goals of life is to experience. We can choose to imbue experience with meaning, with value. It might be a pathway to those things.

I experienced value and meaning on this run. I experienced value and meaning writing this blog post. Let’s not overthink it.