If you’re in the middle of a meeting, whether you joined from home or the office, minor “misfortunes” have a way of finding you. If I recall correctly, it was toward the end of the pandemic, when isolation hadn’t entirely lifted. One day, the pen I loved holding to take notes during meetings declared its independence, falling from my hand, bounding off my lap, hitting the floor, and rolling under the far side of the desk. I turned off my camera, muted my microphone, and, not wanting to miss the discussion, bent down quickly, reaching for the pen like Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Suddenly, a sharp pain shot from my hands, up my neck, straight into my nerve endings, greeting me with an incredibly violent “Hello.”
And this wasn't the first time it had happened.
This pain, which completely restricted my mobility and made me want to immediately throw in the towel and yell “Alright, I yield!”, reminded me, even as it lingered, that this wasn’t just a one-time thing. While cursing at myself, I could hear the meeting carrying on in the background as I continued to suffer.
The Illusion of Control and a New Search
I tend to see situations like this as messages from the universe. To me, nothing happens without a reason. Sometimes the cause is bigger than what we can see or change, and sometimes it just hasn’t revealed itself clearly because we don’t know enough yet. This, frankly, wasn’t one of those deep mysteries. So I couldn’t take the easy way out and curse the universe for my bad luck, nor could I play the helpless victim. I am a software engineer. Even before becoming an engineer, I spent massive amounts of time in front of a computer. When I wasn’t at a screen, I was probably hunched over a book or sitting at a desk listening to a lecture. Furthermore, I couldn’t just blame this on a single awkward movement. I was long past the phase of actionless observation; it had already happened three or four times. Naturally, seeing a doctor, the first thing that comes to most people’s minds, was the very first option I eliminated. I’m not someone who prefers to visit a doctor unless absolutely necessary.
Going to the gym, one of the most popular alternatives, didn’t make much sense to me either. I had lifted weights for a considerable amount of time during my university years and achieved a certain physique, but due to a subsequent shoulder issue, I was no longer supposed to lift heavy. That option, one of the few where I could stay trapped within four walls and mostly sit down, had to be scrapped. Since I really disliked the idea of physical therapy, my mind wandered to running, a sport that crosses many people’s minds but usually stays right there as just a thought. What I had in mind was running in its simplest, most basic form. Anyone interested in this field knows that running isn’t just a broad category; it splits into numerous sub-disciplines with vastly different preparation and execution requirements. But my idea was just running. Stepping outside and moving. It would probably feel incredibly liberating and fun, assuming I could actually do it. The decision was made.
Making a decision doesn’t mean you’ll immediately execute it, of course. Deciding is one action; doing is an entirely different deployment logic. So, first I decided, and then for a while -I don’t remember how long- I just sat with the fact that I had made a decision. Once I stripped away my excuses, and accepted that the excuses would never truly end, I ordered a pair of running shoes, running shorts, and a shirt. I made sure to buy the cheapest gear possible; if I failed, having expensive equipment sitting unused would hurt even more. I did a little research: “How to run.” A flood of content appeared. “10 things beginner runners shouldn’t do,” “5 things you must do,” and so on. As someone who values planning and believes a solid blueprint is strictly essential, I engineered my plan. I would run for 1 minute and walk for 2 minutes. I would repeat this loop for 30 minutes. I even scheduled the exact minute I would step out the door. I intentionally picked a timeframe with minimal foot traffic to minimize the resulting humiliation. I started my smartwatch -which felt much smarter than my current one back then- and began to run.
I had absolutely no idea what pace I was running. Honestly, I didn’t even understand why the metric went down as you sped up. I just wanted that one minute to be over. Then I transitioned to the two-minute walk, utterly shocked by what had just hit my system. That two-minute recovery window passed so quickly that I am certain, though I can’t mathematically prove it, that the one-minute run that came with it was significantly longer. As you might guess, after the third loop, I could no longer keep up the one-minute run. I’d drop into a walk before the minute was up, and eventually, I was just walking. Sometime between the 15th and 20th minute, I aborted the mission, walked to the car, and drove home.
Crashing into Physical Reality
To be honest, the emotions I felt when I got home were incredibly mixed. I was stunned. My pipeline had completely failed; I couldn’t even recall my execution plan. What I did remember was the wind hitting my face, the smell of the coast, the burning sensation in my lungs, and my legs screaming in a “Where did this come from?” tone. Something had shaken me to my core.
Digital Fallacy
No matter how successful you were in the low-pain reward loop constructed by the digital world, or what you achieved by grinding until morning in that domain, you couldn’t obtain those same results in this world, the physical world itself.
The idea that working hard and enduring pain would grant us faster access to our desires made this method feel completely valid to me. Almost every corner of our lives is woven with these dynamics. Our education system, our families, our surrounding network of friends, motivational speakers, and virtually anyone whose voice can reach you accepted this as the undeniable truth, a proven algorithm for success.
Following this algorithm, I had planned very carefully. I optimized costs by starting with cheap gear, deployed my engineering-grade blueprint, and yet… I didn’t get the expected output. Normally, it doesn’t work like this. You make your plan, draw your architecture, provision your infrastructure, and when you test your output, sure, it might not work flawlessly on the first run, but it at least returns results within an acceptable margin of error. Even if it fails entirely, you just pull a late shift or grind harder the next day until it meets your requirements. Yet here I was: forget running the next day, I was questioning whether I would even be able to walk when I woke up. In my mind, running felt this impossible solely because I smoked. Yes, I was a smoker back then. I actually spent quite some time trying to engineer a routine where I could run while continuing to smoke.
If I had to define a core characteristic of mine, it would be my inability to ignore a shift in the direction, temperature, or intensity of the wind hitting my face. This experience was entirely different, and I wanted to explore it. My desire wasn’t just driven by pure curiosity; it felt like a herald of a deeper connection to my roots. It felt deeply familiar, as if this was the correct default state. I couldn’t possibly understand the operational logic behind it at the moment, and I didn’t. Naturally, as you gain experience in an endurance sport and start observing your own telemetry, you realize that the explanation for this “familiar feeling” lies deep within Homo sapiens’ history, a past that stretches far beyond our brief 100-year history of sitting at desks.
The Archaic Sensation
This archaic sensation, coupled with curiosity, is exactly what dragged me out the door for the second, third, and countless subsequent times. The dusty shelves of a life disconnected from my nature, my inflexible and unconditioned legs, all of which made the start so hard, gradually proved capable of adapting to the rhythm where time flows at the body’s optimal speed. As I witnessed this, that archaic sensation transitioned into reality and began to forge me. The more I ran, the more I unraveled my own mechanics. I realized how spectacularly insignificant my reactions to daily life constraints were compared to what is truly natural. I continuously learned what the proper velocity of growth and time should be; I was constantly surprised, and with every new data point, astonished all over again.
Inspiration
Haruki Murakami viewed running as a critical tool, stating: “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.” Writing is one way humans deploy their inner worlds. (Why I Write ?) For some, running serves the exact same function.
As of writing this, I am someone who can run 38km through the brutal inclines of Cappadocia, face the harsh conditions of the Kaçkar Mountains, and compete in several domestic and international races. Yet, my objective function remains identical. I run to discover my true, foundational biological limits. I run to observe my body’s telemetry, its reaction to the load, nutrition, and recovery I throw at it. I run to capture the deep peace hidden beneath the mask of the modern world. Because this artificial system we’ve built is fragile, delicate, and completely against our nature. It is heavily difficult to accept at first, but it is the truth.
I was writing long before I started running. But running refactored everything I write and everything I believe in, straight down to the root.