Why I Run (and Why I Keep Going)
Before I got really depressed, I lost eight of my closest friends in six years.
Some to suicide. Some to overdose. Some to illness that came too soon - a brain aneurysm just before a friend was due to give birth, a sepsis infection while another was overseas, complications from diabetes that took one far too young. One after another, the people who made life vivid were just… gone.
At first, I told myself I was fine - that this was just adulthood, the randomness of fate. But after the eighth funeral, the world stopped making sense. I wasn’t suicidal, but I wasn’t exactly alive either. I was drifting, a rudderless ship waiting for something - anything - to give me a reason to care again.
That reason, eventually, was movement.
Running Toward Life
When I finally got help, a counsellor told me something simple but impossible at the time: “You can’t think your way out of grief - you have to move through it.” I took that literally. I started walking. Then jogging. Then running. Slowly at first, because depression doesn’t lift with a few laps around the block. But the rhythm started to matter - the sound of my breath, the bite of the air, the way my thoughts quieted when my body took over.
Running became my meditation, my therapy, and my measure of time. Every kilometre was a little promise: You’re still here.
I didn’t know it then, but I was proving something that neuroscientist David J. Linden - who wrote A Neuroscientist Prepares for Death while dying of cancer - described perfectly: that the mind can hold contradiction. You can be furious at the unfairness of life and deeply grateful to still have it. You can ache and heal at the same time. That’s what running taught me. Every step hurt and helped. Every finish line was both an ending and a beginning.
The Gift of Mortality
Linden wrote that humans can never fully imagine the totality of their own death - our brains are built to predict a future that always includes us. That’s why so many religions imagine an afterlife: because we literally can’t picture nothing. For a long time, that thought terrified me. Now, I find comfort in it. It means our minds are wired for hope.
When I was at my lowest, I kept wishing I could just stop feeling - to fast-forward through the pain. But loss has a strange side effect: it sharpens your awareness of time. You start to understand that the “someday” you keep postponing might never arrive. The only thing guaranteed is this. The run you can take today. The friend you can text back. The project you can build now, not later.
That awareness didn’t make life easier. It made it urgent.
Discipline Over Despair
Nicholas Thompson’s Why I Run captures this truth through a different lens - one of endurance and legacy. He writes about running as both rebellion and inheritance, a way of proving to himself that he could break the patterns that destroyed his father. What struck me wasn’t his speed or discipline but his honesty: that running is sometimes selfish, sometimes salvation, and often both.
That duality resonated. When I train, I’m not chasing medals. I’m chasing clarity. The rhythm forces honesty. You can’t lie to yourself at kilometre 15. You can’t fake effort when your legs are burning. Running humbles you. It strips away the noise and leaves you face-to-face with your limits - and your resilience.
I realised that what I loved most about running wasn’t finishing. It was beginning again. Every morning. Every week. Every setback. It mirrored recovery itself: no shortcuts, no applause, just consistency and belief that something better waits at the other side of the hill.
The Body Remembers What the Mind Forgets
People talk about “clearing their head” when they run. For me, it’s the opposite - it fills my head with perspective. When I’m moving, grief feels less heavy. The memories of the people I lost don’t vanish; they jog alongside me. Sometimes I picture them laughing at my pace. Sometimes I just thank them for the reminder: life doesn’t pause because we’re hurting.
Science backs this up, of course. Exercise floods the brain with endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine - the same chemicals that antidepressants target. But the deeper magic is emotional, not chemical. Running externalises pain. It turns something invisible into motion, proof that even broken things can move forward.
It’s not about speed. It’s about direction.
The Quiet Religion of Routine
I’m not religious. But I’ve come to understand why people pray. There’s something sacred about repetition - the ritual of lacing up, stepping outside, and facing the same stretch of road that tried to defeat you yesterday. You learn reverence for the body, gratitude for breath, and faith in progress.
Linden wrote that the brain spends much of its energy predicting the near future. Maybe that’s what running really is - a practice in staying just one step ahead of despair. You don’t have to believe in eternity. You just have to believe in next.
What I’ve Learned From Moving Forward
Momentum is medicine. Even small motion disrupts stagnation.
Discipline breeds freedom. Routine gives shape to chaos.
Pain isn’t proof of failure. Sometimes it’s the sign you’re still in the fight.
We don’t outrun grief. We carry it better.
You’re allowed to stop - just not to quit.
Where I’m Headed
I’m not running away from the darkness anymore. I’m running with it - pacing myself beside it, breathing through it, letting it remind me what’s at stake.
When I cross finish lines now, I don’t feel triumphant. I feel grateful. Grateful for the miles between who I was and who I am. Grateful for the friends who can’t be here but somehow still are. Grateful that when my mind says stop, my body still whispers go.
Life isn’t a sprint toward perfection. It’s a long, uneven run toward peace - and I’m finally okay with that.