Something broke in my system in February of 1988 so that since then, when I exercise much past a mile or two daily, I quickly or slowly get a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome relapse that matches exactly the level of my exertion. For example, sustained exertion over weeks brings a sustained relapse that lasts weeks while a one-time exertion of many miles brings a sudden but short-lived relapse of a few days. Given that I can’t exercise much in real life, I’m experimenting with active visualization of my past experiences with jogging and working out. I find this makes me feel alive and fills me with adrenalin and provokes memories and strong feelings. I don’t want to live passively, so I’m writing everything out.
Remember my jogs through Angwin, hoping to find a better way? I was frustrated with my life. I was disconnected. I was lonely. I was unpopular. I knew what I had wasn’t working. I had to try something new. So off I went on a run. I’d chew up the miles and hope to run into a girl who liked me. I thought that by getting ahead, winning awards, pushing myself forward, securing fame and fortune, I’d get more of what I wanted — connection, friends, family, love.
I was ill at ease, restless, discontented, and I tried to run away from my problem. I’m always trying to run away. Get away. Fix the damn thing! F***! F***! I hate my life. It’s not working. And my attempts to fix things don’t work either but I won’t go down without a fight. Something is so wrong.
I was a 12 year old kid and I was running 40 miles a week. Something is wrong here. What’s wrong with this picture? Why does the kid have so much desperation and unhappiness that he runs marathons at age 12? I found a measure of distinction through my running but that ended in the fall of 1979 when my knees began swelling up, they couldn’t take the pounding, and I had to abandon running for the next five years.
I’ve lived many places aside from Pacific Union College but there was something special about that place and I keep returning to it in my visualizations. The place is pregnant with meaning and emotion for me. As I close my eyes and experience myself racing up Howell Mountain Road and hear the honk of the horns of friends and see their waves and I wave back and I feel connected. I feel part of the group.
When my parents were gone, those six months finishing up eighth grade at PUC, that’s the first time I felt at least a normal level of connection with my classmates. That was my first taste of sustained and deep happiness. Over the next four years, I kept returning to PUC to fill up on this feeling. Those were definitely the best times of my high school years. PUC was my community. People knew me there. We were bound by a similar religion and way of life. It’s just easier to connect when you’re part of an insular group. And when those tanks of connection are filled up, it’s easier to face the world and to want to explore. Without that connection and community and love, I feel weak and fragile, ill at ease, restless, discontented, angry, frustrated, broken.
When I was at PUC, I never saw myself living there. I just wanted to launch myself into the world, knowing that the place would still be there for me forever. I had a home. I had a place for me.
My God, that evening in May of 1980, when I found out we would not be returning to PUC, that we would have to live elsewhere, my heart broke. I was glad to find out we were going to Auburn, it was less than three hours drive away from PUC and my friends the Muths.
Auburn was so lonely compared to PUC. PUC was lonely for me too but at least there were lots of people there I could potentially connect with, but in Auburn, our religious community was much more spread out. There was no one to hang out with on most Sabbath afternoons. It was just me and long walks and books and I felt so empty and sad and longing.
Remember all my jogs through the fog along the canal that flowed a mile below our home at 7955 Bullard Drive? I’d just run mile after mile and there was nobody, nobody I wanted to ****.
I had my moments at Placer High School, a public school. It was an opportunity for me to spread my wings outside of Adventism, outside of Christianity, and to begin to explore the wider world through the tool of journalism. I had success, but it didn’t fill me up the way life at PUC did. There’s something special about belonging to a close-knit religious community with transcendent purpose. Everything becomes more meaningful. Life has more depth and texture and color. There were so many great people at PUC, we shared values and a way at looking at life, it was easier to communicate and to eat together and to do everything together. The outside world is much more complex.
I took that year off after high school and went back to Australia and felt so lonely as my mates back in California moved ahead with their lives. So I came home and I still couldn’t get it together at Sierra Community College. Imagine Desmond Ford’s son taking a semester off — only six unit! — to work as a landscaper. Oy! In that miserably cold winter, I was slogging away in the mud and rain for $4.50 an hour. I was nuts. I made such bad choices.
I was desperate, searching, trying things, shaking up my life, looking for a better way, and I was lonely. I thought my muscles and toughness would help me find a woman, or at least build a foundation upon which I could accomplish great things and then get the woman I deserved and then things like friends and community would fall into place.
These visualization exercises, taking me back to my daily runs of seventh grade, do get my blood pumping. Sometimes, when I remember running along a beautiful trail, I feel strong and I pump with endorphins, even though I’m just lying on the floor listening my favorite pop songs of the era.
Remember how much of the time I was hungry? Eating between meals was a sin. Eating much for dinner was a sin. I was starving, sad, lonely, miserable, disconnected. I wasn’t cared for and I didn’t know how to care for myself. I kept seeking out sustenance and I usually found it through my friendships with the bachelor PE teachers Chuck, David, Duane. I’d hang out in their offices. I could talk to them about everything that interested me. I was closer to them than my classmates most of the time.
What would I say today to my miserable seventh-grade kid? My God, I am today just the type of mentor and friend that I sought out in 1978-1979. So what would I say to my 12-year old self? What kind of conversations would we have? What wisdom would I impart? Let’s imagine that friendship.
He’d come into my office. I’m the school’s Alexander Technique teacher. He’s awkward, scrawny, carelessly dressed, only washes his hair once a week.
Luke Senior: “Son, the quality of your life is the quality of your relationships. Reduce doing the things that separate you from the people you want in your life.”
Luke Junior: “But I feel driven to antagonize people. Driven. It’s in my DNA. It’s beyond my control. I can squash it for a few days but it always roars out. Look at you. You’re constantly antagonizing people, keeping them at arm’s length. You’ve never married. You have no kids. You don’t have so many friends or why else would you be hanging out with me?”
Sr: “You’re right. I’m right. We both need to get help. This is why there are psychologists. Religion and running are not enough. We can’t just distract ourselves from our problems.”
Jr: “If I can only be great, these problems will disappear. If I can win some races, get some fame and fortune, I’ll get more friends, I’ll get a girlfriend, I’ll be honored and people will want to be close to me.”
Sr. “There’s enough to what you say that I can’t dismiss it entirely, but let me ask you, how’s that working out for you? Do you have any talent as a runner?”
Jr. “It’s not working out. I don’t have any talent as a runner beyond an ability to discipline myself to do it.”
Sr. “That’s not going to be enough to get fame and as for fortune, there’s no fortune in being a famous runner. You’re a writer. It’s fine for you to devote all your effort right now into running. It’ll give you insight you can use in your writing, but at core, you’re a runner with no special gift, but when it comes to writing, that’s not just your gift, it’s your mission in life. Channel your frustration into your writing. Write every day. Fill up notebooks and don’t lose them and don’t let your parents read them.”
Jr. “I have no place I can hide them that my mom won’t find them and read them, so it kills all desire I have to pour myself out into a diary. So I pour myself out to you instead.
“I gotta know. Does it get better?”
Sr. “It gets better but there are also necessary losses every step of the way. There are things you have now you’ll never have again. With every year, you’ll gain stuff and lose stuff. In all likelihood, as you age you’ll gain more independence and you’ll be happier. But you gotta get help. You can’t be proud. You’re survival, your happiness, your life is at stake. You can’t just will your way out of the rut you’re in.
“Let’s go for a run.”
OK. We set off.
Jr. “My knees knock when I run.”
Sr. “That’s no good. You’re not exactly poetry in motion.”
Jr. “I know. I run as awkwardly as I talk to girls as I do everything, just ill at ease and constantly banging into myself and going in circles.”
Sr. “You’re heavily armored with unnecessary body tension and this is distorting your gait and making jogging more painful. You’re jolting your connective tissue with every step and straining yourself and putting yourself at risk of injury. You need Alexander Technique.”
Jr. “It’s too expensive. My parents can’t afford it.”
Sr. “There are easier ways to run. There are easier ways to talk to people. There are easier ways to relate to yourself. There are easier ways to go through life. When you tire of the results you’re getting now, you’ll be open to learning new things that will impart more grace into your efforts.”
