Pleasure: a Temporary Respite from Reality

I took the following from "Monday Monday", a brilliant publication distributed via fax every week, authored by Jay L.T. Breakstone, Esq. Mr. Breakstone is an exceptional attorney and an amazing writer. Mr. Breakstone's website can be found by clicking here.

Mr. Breakstone touches on many of the ideas which serve as common threads between my posts.

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Lovely day, yesterday. Perfect temperature for the New York City Marathon. It found us on First Avenue and 89th Street, en famille, like Jean Valjean and Eponine at the barricades. We cheered and clapped, bewildered at the colors and the spectacle, all while looking for an uncle/brother/brother-in-law/son (who finished in sub-3:45 time, besting his past year's performance.) The day was uniquely New York.

Ah, but something unsettles. There is much valiant, but little aesthetically pleasing about 39,000 ectomorphs running in their skivvies. Perhaps, it's the images of starving people or prison camp survivors. Now, don't jump. We disgustingly large people recognize that we will die young, if full. But don't fool us into believing that the pleasure of running 26.2 miles is equivalent to Junior's cheesecake or a roll in the hay.

Perhaps we see beyond the act of running, to the more difficult question of what one is running from or to. The "runner's high" must disappear if you arrive home, only to find that you forgot to pay the cable bill and your kids can't watch the Disney channel.

So, is there any difference between the act of running and the act of, let us say, drinking a perfect martini? Not really. In both cases, the pleasure is a respite from the difficulty of conquering life's everyday problems. For the moment, whether pounding the pavement or bending the elbow, we have gone beyond, risen above, and spent some time with the gods. The martini is better, however, because at the end, you get an olive and you don't chafe.