Logic v. Artist

Logically, this is all quite useless… The Ironman, an ultramarathon, marathon running, etc. it’s beyond “health”, as I’ve said before. And, logically, that keeps it unsettling.
Logically, I am told to “take it easy”.
Logically, I am told to “be safe on the road”.
Logically, I am told that “Ironman will consume your time, your precious time…”
Logically, I am told many different things.

I think our brains are always in a battle between the “logical” way of thinking and the “artistic” way of thinking. Here’s what the artist thinks:

“Wouldn’t it be cool to finish in the top 100?”
“Hey, I love my new bike!”
“I get to have a beer after Sunday’s race” (okay, that’s maybe not my artist talking)
“Let’s see if I can push harder”
“Let’s see what I am capable of”
“Why not?”
“That girl is cute”

I threw that last one in there because my artistic side tends to think randomly J… It’s not very cooperative with helping me organize a theory here…

My point?

I think the artist is always looking holistically at what’s going on, whereas the “logician” is looking for the cause of the symptom… Logic is equating things so that I can make sense of it, live in certainty, and not rock the boat.

Artist is saying “push a little harder (even though it MIGHT hurt)”, “don’t settle”, “I could be really good at this”. It’s uncertain, it’s in dreamland. It’s a series of unrelated thoughts that all don’t make sense except that they all happen together.

Ironman, I think, is nurturing the artist within. The drive comes from the creative side of our lives. This is not the side that earns a living, eats, rests, beats the heart, etc. We need that logical side too in order to sustain life, but the creative side is, truly, what we live life FOR.

I tend to say the same things over and over again, and in reality this journal is just a daily (or somewhat daily) reflection of where I am that day. Trust me, things are happening in my life that have nothing to do with Ironman. If you can believe that! The process of just putting down my thoughts on Ironman, make the Ironman an integral part of my daily routine, and I use this as a way of focusing the other areas of my life that are also important. Ironman, though, really is becoming a metaphor of life for me. I used to think that was so, well, melodramatic and a bit clichéd. But now I kind of realize that it’s in these passions that we find out about ourselves. Irrelevant activity is where I find true happiness.

A race is an artistic work in itself. It's a painting, a short story, a long story, a play, a drama, a comedy, a lyric, a poem... It unfolds as it’s own story and set of chapters, and my role in it is to play it out to the end. To contribute to it as a participant I am inserting a character into the story and, conversely, inserting a story for my character to navigate through (figure THAT out logically :)). My role in a race is to push the person in front of me, or behind me, to his or her own best ability. In order for someone to win my age group, I have to come in 2nd, or 3rd, or 4th. Otherwise, there is no age group to win.

See, we’re all interconnected in this. A race is no race of one, it’s a race of many. Each of us are going to rely on each other to help us become something greater. And we are all something greater at the end of an Ironman. It’s amazing that something so irrelevant, so playful, can become so significant to each of us. Like someone finishing a 10k race, or their first marathon, or their first 20 minutes of running without a break. Instead of questioning the logic of the feeling of accomplishment, embrace it, because that feeling is what creates a better life!

Agree? Disagree? What do you think?

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” – C.G. Jung