September 2016. I am talking to a friend over the phone about my grandfather. My grandmother died a year earlier, leaving him alone and spiraling out of control. He was depressed, shut in, closed off from everyone, and slowly killing himself with alcohol. He was also destroying my mother, who was desperately trying to arrest his decline and limit his drinking.
I wish it was just romantic. My grandfather missed my grandmother. They have been married for 60 years, and he didn’t want to live without her anymore. And he did miss her. And had constant nightmares about her burial with a backhoe. That was all true. But he was also a lifelong alcoholic. My grandmother fought him on his drinking all of their life. I thought she was being too controlling, but we didn’t understand how much she did, how bad the problem was, until she was gone.
But the problems didn’t start after my grandmother’s death. My grandpa was isolated and shut in long before she was gone. He had almost no close connections. No male friends that he met regularly. No interests outside of Russian TV and newspapers. No hobbies. No reason to go outside. No reason to leave their tiny Brooklyn apartment. No reason not to be drunk. No reason to live. After my grandmother was gone, all he had left was killing himself with alcohol.
Unloading all of this on my friend… I finally told him what was really bothering me. I shiver went through me when I first said it out loud.
“I… I don’t want to die like my grandfather.”
He thought I was being too dramatic. I had a wife, a kid, friends and interests. I wasn’t an alcoholic. I didn’t have my grandfather’s life. But it wasn’t all different. Like my grandfather I was a stringent introvert and homebody. I had no close male friends who I could go and meet. My entertainment and interests involved me staring into my computer. I worked remotely, and avoided any work that required me going into an office. I could spend a week inside the house, glued to the computer and not notice. I struggled with my weight, sluggishness, and low energy. I was afraid and resistant to start or do anything new or physical.
But I was in my mid 30s. I wasn’t a hermit or a shut in. I gardened. I ate healthy. We went out as a family. I was fine. (And so was my grandfather at 30.) The problem wasn’t really visible at 30. But it would be when I got to 70. If my kids moved away and were busy with their own families. With my friends dead or too old. With no interests outside of a screen. No reason to go outside. I would not be that different from my grandfather.
I said it again: “I do not want to die like my grandfather.”
Something had to change. I had to change. I had to change how I approached my life. How I approached scary and new things. Movement. Getting out of the house. If I wanted me to be different when I was old, I had to change myself now. If I wanted to feel a necessity for movement and new experiences when I was 80 and frail, I had to start doing it now.
I had another example of an older man in my life. My father-in-law. He was a beloved pediatrician, the head of his department, an author of a medical textbook. He had a wide social network: work, volunteer boards, synagogue, friends, and neighbors. He was recently retired, but still busy and in demand. He constantly traveled, both for fun, and to visit his 11 grandchildren (15 now). He explored, met new people, and learned new things.
He was also 70 years old. Just a decade and a half younger than my grandfather. And he still jogged daily, and ran in half marathons every few months (giving away his medals to the grandkids). He was in better physical and mental shape that I had ever been in. His life could not have been more different from my grandfathers. He had also invited me, a number of times, to come jogging with him, but I always turned him down, as it was too embarrassing to not be able to keep up with a 70 year old. And anyway, I wasn’t going to be a jogger. That kind of thing wasn’t for people like me.
“I think I should start jogging” I told my friend.
It was a ridiculous statement. I was a chubby homebody. I got winded while walking with my wife. I have never sustained a long term exercise regimen of any sort. I have never sustained ANYTHING scary and difficult long term really. I have tried to start jogging several times in my life, and dropped it after no more than a week. Me? Jogging? Outside? Daily? I was not the jogger type. It just didn’t fit with my personality. I could not imagine myself doing it consistently. It was, honestly, something genuinely impossible.
My friend agreed. It was an impossible goal. He was also a homebody IT professional who struggled with his weight. He’s considered jogging as well, but it was just too much of a commitment. I needed to plan this out. Maybe join a gym. Get a treadmill. Read some books on jogging motivation. Maybe make it a new years resolution and find some running group. But just be honest that it’s a huge undertaking with a high chance of failure.
Something clicked in that moment. If I wanted to start jogging. I had to start it now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not after new years. Now. Right now. His advice was good. But it was a delay. It was a way for me to lose my terror of ending up like my grandfather. To forget my motivation to change. I could also hear my friend’s own fear at his own need to change. This was an uncomfortable conversation for him. He was talking to the both of us.
I didn’t want to die like my grandfather…
And that fear, in that moment, was greater in me than my fear of doing something new and scary. I had to make a choice, between the lives of my grandfather and my father-in-law and act on that choice. If I was going to make a change, and be different from my grandfather at 80, it had to start now. I would have to start doing impossible things.
I thanked my friend for listening. Hanged up the phone. Got a pair of shorts and dug up a dusty pair of sneakers, from 4 years ago, my last jogging attempt. I got my headphones and a small MP3 player that I listened to when I gardened. I went outside. I considered running up the road to the forest path, but I felt too embarrassed to be seen by my neighbors. Fine, I would run in a circle around my property. We had 2 acres of land, I might as well use it.
I could feel my body starting to freak out. I remembered how running would feel. I had eaten earlier. I would get a stitch in my side. My lungs would burn. I would feel sour bile in my throat. I would feel dizzy and nauseous. I would be in pain tomorrow. Running was the worst. But it had to be done. I did not want to die like my grandfather.
I started stretching and made a plan. I would run two laps around the property. As slow as I wanted to. If I got the stitch in my side, I would stop running and just walk until it passed, and then get back to running. If I could deal with 2 laps for a week, I would go up to 3 laps, and so on. I would do this slowly, but daily. This was a safe plan. I really wanted to succeed.
I started running. It was painful. I was coughing and wheezing. My lungs were on fire. The bile was in my mouth. The stitch came in and I had to walk. I wanted to quit after the first lap. I felt ridiculous and chubby, my body bits flapping around as I moved. But I finished the second lap. It wasn’t great. But it was something.
I did not feel good. My lungs ached and I kept coughing. But I felt resolved. I knew why I was doing this. My grandfather would not have picked up running. So I would have to. Because I didn’t want to be him. And maybe I could never live up to my father-in-laws example either, but I could do this much. I could keep jogging.
I knew I needed to ground this somehow. This motivation would soon vane. The fear would pass. There would be rainy days. Cold days. Sleepless kid nights. Many reasons to not run for one, two, three days and then never come back to it. So I decided to post about it on Facebook. Daily. Run in the morning and then post about it. Get likes and encouragement. But even more so, I felt that people would notice if I didn’t post. And I didn’t want to disappoint them and be a failure publicly. So I posted about my run on Facebook, and promised to do it again tomorrow morning.
I ran the next day in the morning. I was sceptical. My wife was sceptical. But Facebook was expecting my post. So I ran another 2 laps. The stitch came back, but it was less. I still coughed afterwards, but for less. I posted about it on Facebook, and promised to run again the next day.
I went on Google Maps and measured my running path around our house and orchard. It was 1/7th of mile. So if I got to 7 laps, that would be a mile. This would be my first goal. My first big running achievement – 1 mile of running.
I ran 3 laps on the 3rd day. Than 4 on the 5th. I kept going slow, walking when the stitch came in. The neighbors never came out. I stopped worrying about how I looked. I still felt exhausted and finishing the last lap was painful, but I stopped feeling like my body was at the verge of organ failure. I kept posting daily on Facebook. Enjoying posting larger and larger lap numbers.
I reached the 1 mile mark by my 3rd week. It felt good. I stopped getting the stitch. I stopped coughing. I felt stronger and happier throughout the day. But I still hated running. Getting myself out the door every morning took all my will power, and I was useless for the rest of the day. There was nothing pleasant about the exercise for me. It was painful and boring. I was not a jogger. And I hated doing this.
Every run was an intense head game. I had to fool myself to finish my run. The first two laps would be ok, but the leg pain and burning lungs come in by the 3rd, and would want to stop. So I would tell myself, one more lap. Let’s get to 4. Let’s at least pass the half a mile mark. Ok, so I’m at 4. I feel like hell, but I probably have one more lap in me. Let’s see if it’s possible. I can go really slow. And once I was at 5… well I am almost done. If I am going to post about this, might as well say I ran the full mile. It just looks better. So let’s push through two more laps. And I did. I would then post about the full mile run, and then do the same self-fooling the next morning.
Running one mile became easier. I then reached my 2nd mile, 14 laps. I needed a new running goal. The 5 Minute Mile seemed to be a big goal on running websites. It currently took me 15 minutes to run a mile. So I decided to start reducing that number. If I got to 5 minutes, I would not just be a jogger, I would be fast as well. I would be fit.
So I started pushing towards 5 minutes. I got a stopwatch. I changed my approach to running. The goal wasn’t about running daily anymore, but improving my time when I did. I got to 10 minutes, than 8. I started to exercise my legs, eating more protein, and skipping running so my muscles could heal and grow. I started missing more and more days between runnings. Running itself got more and more painful as I pushed myself to run faster and faster to bring down my time. On days when I woke up not feeling strong, and would have no chance to reach a smaller time, I didn’t run at all.
I was still posting about running on Facebook. But more sporadically. With more focus on running faster and improving my time at all costs. I was angry when kid kept me up, or I ate the wrong things the day before, and would not have a good run time. A few people pointed out that my goals seemed a bit unhealthy, and constant running improvement wasn’t sustainable in the long run. Or more to the point – I wasn’t jogging. I was sprinting. Jogging was about consistency and habit – not speed and achievements. But I didn’t care. I liked having an extreme goal to reach. And I didn’t want to be a jogger anyway.
Then I got the flu. Stayed in bed for a while. Didn’t eat for a week. Missed 2 weeks of running and exercising. I stopped posting anything on Facebook. No one called me out for stopping. When I got better, it felt as if my muscles had reset. I was as far from reaching my 5 Minute Mile mark as when I started. All those painful runs. All those sacrifices. It all felt pointless.
I did not restart running. I stayed in bed in the mornings. I avoided Facebook and my old posts. I wasn’t sure why I started jogging in the first place. I didn’t like running. I never liked running. I wasn’t a jogger. I wasn’t going to be a jogger. This was going to be another one of my starts and failures, notable only for lasting longer than others. It was what it was. It was who I was. I moved on.
Then my grandpa died. My mom had taken away all the money in the house. And brought him his food and news papers, so he would not have a chance to get alcohol. So my grandpa pawned his wedding ring, and my grandmother’s jewelry, got money, got alcohol, got extremely drunk, fell and hurt himself, got taken to a hospital, and died there in a coma.
It’s not pretty. It’s not fair. It’s not what you should tell your children about their grandparents. My grandfather did a lot of good things in his life, and it’s not right that he should be remembered for his end as an alcoholic. But that’s not what I remember in the end. It’s his drinking. His depression. His unwillingness to change anything in his life. Him slowly killing my mother with guilt and worry. My anger at his selfishness and weakness. My relief at his death.
My sister and I flew back to New York. There was the funeral home, the wake, the burial, and sorting out my grandparents crammed apartment. Most importantly I was there to help my mother deal with her overwhelming pain and regret for not catching him, not taking away the valuables, stopping him, finding his stash, saving him, being a better daughter. It was a tough week. Death is never simple. Even less so for children of Alcoholics.
I flew back to California.
I did not want to die like my grandfather.
I remembered why I started jogging. My choice between my grandfather and father-in-law. Making changes in my life now that would make me different than him at 70. I wanted to get back to that. Not because it would feel good. Not because it would get me to run marathons. But because I needed to do something that my grandfather didn’t. Start something new. Keep at it. Move. Daily. Get out of the house.
I wanted it to last this time. Pushing myself to speed and distance did not work. It made running an ever increasing chore that I could not sustain. It got wrapped up with my ego, fed into my desire for extremes, and my hatred for my body. It used up all my will power, and made me useless for the rest of the day. It was a prescription for eventual self-sabotage and burn out.
But running one mile worked. Rain or shine. Going as slow as I wanted to. 7 circles around our house and garden. It was quick. It was simple. Short enough to do when tired or sleepy, but enough to give me a sweat. My challenge would be consistency. Do it daily. Keep it going. If I stop because of sickness, or injury, or weather, get back into it. I would be a jogger not a runner.
I didn’t post anything on Facebook. I didn’t tell my friends. I was too ashamed of dropping again, like I did earlier. I wasn’t sure if this 2nd attempt would last. But I knew I had to try. Before I watched my grandfather killing himself, now he was dead. This was it. This was my final reminder to change.
I ran again on the day I landed from New York. Starting with 2 laps same as before. It felt just as bad as when I started. The burning, the stitch, the bile. But I knew that it would pass. I knew it would get better. It did. By the second week I was back to 7 laps. I kept myself from going past 7 laps. If I didn’t feel like running I ran slowly and daydreamed. If I felt energetic and excited I ran faster and sprinted some of the last lap. If I got no sleep, or was hungover, or sick, I ran slower than I walked, using the same mind games to get myself to finish the mile.
I stopped having goals to reach. The only goal was to keep running. But there were still firsts. First time jogging after the rain. First time jogging in the rain. Jogging in freezing weather. Jogging while wearing sweats and a coat. Jogging over snow. Jogging not around my house when we went on a trip. Jogging after a twisted ankle. Jogging with my kids.
A year passed. I kept jogging. Maybe not daily, but at least 4 times a week. I was still doing only 1 mile a run. And it was getting much easier, both physically and mentally. The running wasn’t painful anymore, and I ended the run feeling more energetic than before. I needed less and less will power to get myself out the door in the morning. I still didn’t enjoy running, and I didn’t think of myself as a jogger, but the act itself wasn’t painful anymore. It was something that I did now. Part of my morning. A habit almost.
I got the flu again. 2 weeks in bed. On the first morning that I felt strong enough to go out to the garden and walk around, I felt a lack. I needed to run. It was there in my body. A desire to run. I wanted to take it easy. To recover for another week. But the desire was there. My day was not complete without a run. And now I had to expand my willpower to not run. So I went running. Another first, jogging after being sick. Not dropping it like last time.
And as I ran slowly. My body both hating and desiring the exertion. I asked myself the question: is this it? Is this a part of me now? This is not fun. But it’s not bad. It feels worse not to run now. Am I over the hardest part? Am I a jogger now?
The fun part came in at the end of the second year for me. My non-running days were worse now. I started craving the cold morning wind. The warm caress of the rising sun. The first pounding of my sneakers on the earth. The answer of my body, as I started running. Are you ready? Yes, I can do this. Let’s go fast today.
I kept on running only one mile. It didn’t feel like it took any will power anymore. It gave me will power now. I felt I could do more in my day after a run. I started eating healthier. Doing pushups before breakfast. I felt calmer. I felt stronger. I felt more confident. .
It was a calm, quiet confidence. But it was there, inside of me. And I’ve earned it. I was a jogger now. It was impossible. Unthinkable for me and my body for most of my life. But I did it. I was a regular runner. I started something scary and hard, and I kept on with it. Now I could not imagine myself not doing it anymore. This was a part of me now. Why would I ever start my mornings without a jog?
Of all the things that I got from jogging, this Confidence was the biggest. It wasn’t just a confidence in my body and myself. A confidence that I could keep up with a scary habit and not be like my grandfather. It was a confidence that I could do more. If I did the impossible once, why not again? If one impossible personal change was doable, why not others?
Jogging didn’t just make me more confident. It made me confident about earning more confidence. Every time I run now, I reminds me that I am actively doing the impossible.
3 years after I started jogging I started meditating. It also seemed like something impossible for my hyperactive brain. But I started doing it. Because I knew I could do it. Because I’ve done it before. Five months after, I am still with it, and I plan to keep it for life. Meditation was hard as well. But it’s got easier. Just as the running did. It doesn’t cost me will power, it gives me willpower.
Now I am looking for my next challenge. My next impossible thing to disprove.
But for now, its time for my morning run.
