What if I told you that at least in
upstate New York, there is a constant theme of drama in the running community?
Perhaps you might be surprised, or perhaps the drama in Albany’s running
community is just a reflection of our society in 2017. I can currently think of at least 3 major feuds going on between various groups in the running community,
and I am sort of involved in one. Well let me rephrase that, I was sort of
involved in one, but I made an attempt last year to really remove myself from
it. This topic has been on my mind for quite a while. For this week’s post, I
thought I would do a little exploring on this topic, since it bothers me and
several others in the running community.
There are plenty of us in the
running community who are supportive and keep to ourselves. But when you log
onto the digital sphere it becomes a UFC cage match. I am a believer in the anonymous
jerk theory which states that when you typing behind a phone/computer screen
you are not held back from saying truly awful, hurtful, and confrontational
things. We say things over the internet that we would never even think to say in a face-to-face situation. For example, if a NFL player makes a major mistake in a football game
they are normally flooded with hate mail, including threats of violence and
death over a game. Maybe you
need an extra sentence to realize how crazy that is. That player didn’t steal
your money, sleep with your wife, hurt your child, yet you just threatened to
kill him for dropping a ball in a game that has no relevance to your personal
life.
Most of
the drama I see in the running community takes place in the digital arena. But
since we are a digitalized society, we spend most of time in the e-sphere when
we are not pounding it out on the roads. When you meet most of these people in person,
they seem pleasant enough. It’s not like they scream obscenities and insults
while they are running, driving, or whatever they are doing when not on their
phone/computer. But once you get them behind a screen, out comes the monster in
them.
So why is it that those of us who
share a common passion fight as if we were in high school? It’s like each major
group is a clique. There is a clique of the popular kids. There is a clique of
the slightly less popular kids. Then there are the rest of us. Now not everyone
has complete disdain for each other, but for groups of adults it’s an
astonishing pattern of behavior.
Runners like the rest of us come in
a wide variety of flavors similar to ice cream. There are people like me; we
will call them mint chocolate chip, who have a big and bold personality that
leaves a sharp taste. Of course you have the run of the mill vanilla
personality who are pleasant, slightly sweet, and don’t cause trouble. Strawberry being the closest to blood color
is the instigator; they are always looking/ready for a feud and have long lists
of enemies. As in a Stewart’s shop there
are other flavors there as well that I am leaving out. When you mix them into
the sundae of life you can get some amazing creations where the flavors come
together in something incredible. Sometimes, however, the flavors come together
in a storm where they try to outmatch each other and you get the kind of ice
cream creation that goes right into the trash after one spoonful.
There probably isn’t an all-encompassing
solution to this issue. We are all human beings at the end of the day driven by
different desires. We live in a wild and crazy time where the social norms we
grew up with have been replaced by a new reality. We have a president who sends
out insulting tweets like a 12-year old boy. We have terrorists who live to
kill instead of living to let live. We have those who seek to dominate other’s
thoughts with a one-size-fits all approach where if you have one minor
disagreement all of a sudden you are a terrible person. There is little doubt
in my mind that the drama I see in the running community is just a microcosm of
the world around us. We as runners have to accept this reality because we do
not have the power to change the thought patterns of our society around us. But we do have the power to change how we
treat each other as runners. We all have a common goal in running and that is
to be successful however that definition fits the individual runner.
From my perspective as a society we are
devolving and not evolving. Maybe one day in the distant future, we will achieve
a higher level of understanding, compassion, and intellectual awareness that reveals
just how truly silly our society was in the mid to late 2010's. Based on what I observe today we as humans will
either be long removed from the earth, or we will keep spiraling backward until
we grow hair on our bodies and go back to being apes.
All I learned from this post is I know want ice cream! Thanks Ben!
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