“Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.”
William Shakespeare
This quote reminds me of hedonic adaptation, the phenomenon that we adapt surprisingly quickly to pleasure or pain. This quote implies not pain, but the pleasure of having accomplished something, and how fleeting those moments of satisfaction are. I personally don’t find it difficult to think back to past successes (e.g. college graduations, buying a motorcycle, finishing a PCT through hike) and muse at how within hours or, at most, days, I was looking for another “doing” for my soul’s joy.
A pessimistic view of the hedonic treadmill is that we are doomed to suffer and strive in order to have joy (what a paradox, no?). The joy of a long distance run comes not from finishing it, but from the quadricep and lung burning inherent in the process of watching the ground roll by under the legs one stone and dirt clod at a time, meter after meter, minute after minute. The joy of a work project comes not from it’s completion, but from the days and weeks of toiling away at it. We plan and save and delay gratification for a vacation and finally, after months, arrive at our idyllic setting, only to find it lacking after a couple days. In other words, we strive and toil, and get little lasting emotional reward, and then have to find a new Sisyphean struggle, and any other strategy for life leads to even less satisfaction.
But I think that the level of struggle in the “doing” of a task is up to us. And it depends on if we’re focused on the task itself (the present) or the outcome. The more we focus on the outcome, the less joy we find in either the doing towards, or the acquisition of, the outcome.
This is a way that running, swimming, or any physical exercise is a spiritual practice for me. The site of the photo of this post took me about 10 miles to reach by foot, most of it running. It is all too easy to be running along and finding myself thinking, “this sucks… I don’t want to be doing this.” And there is an accompanying emotion of stress, of resistance. Maybe I’m tired because I’ve been running too much, and not resting or stretching enough (this is likely). It’s far easier to be in the present when everything is feeling good and energy is abundant. When I’m tired, the mind wants to find an escape. Then it thinks, “the end of the run will be our escape! Huh buddy?” And like the faithful pain avoider that it is designed to be, it tugs at me incessantly and in proportion to the discomfort I’m feeling. But no matter what the state of my body, the choice of present vs future focus is up to me. The challenge may be greater in some circumstances, and I might fall off the presence wagon more often (like every 30 seconds), but that just gives me more practice getting back on it.
I don’t run so much for the physical conditioning. I do it for the consciousness conditioning of staying in the present. For the concentration practice, the willpower, the discipline, and practicing being in charge of my mind rather than allowing it to be in charge of me.