I ran a marathon today. It was a fun experience. I met several new people. These people were Marathon Maniacs. I met a guy who has completed 1,000 marathons; and another couple of guys who had run 6 or more just this week. There was talk of jumping on airplanes to get to the next place; and I was asked where was I running next week. It occurred to me that if I hung around these people too long, I'd want to be like them. And so I learned that we as people gather into like minded groups and then promote our cause to other people hoping they'll join us. This is not bad, just not good for me who hopes to live a non-dogmatic life and have an original thought sometime before I die. If I want to think outside the box, I have to be outside the box. If I want to be a diverse contributor, then I must remain a diverse person and not be assimilated in the group.
I did really well, since there was a huge wind blowing us along for the first 18 miles. After that, I put my head down and bull dogged my way "uphill" for 8 miles to the finish. You might say that the real race began after 18 miles.
Included in my weekend was a long shopping trip to Barnes and Nobel. I haven't been to one of these since moving to Texas, as the mall is to much trouble for me. But there was a store next to my hotel in Corpus Christi, so I went over to browse. After a very long time, I finally decided to by an Anne Rand book, my 3rd, but I promptly lost it today. But as I browsed, I noted intrigue books, war books, religious books. I could feel my own secret desire to buy yet one more book about religious life. Somehow, the message I got from all this browsing is that we are seeking for something and hope to find it in a book. I do. But that never works.
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