Would we all be better off with more pain?

One of the questions I have been asking myself a lot in 2020 is “What’s the point?”

I don’t mean to sound down but I hope some of you know what I mean when I say that some days it’s just difficult to see the future. As all those structures we take for granted fall away, why get up? Why leave the house, exercise, cook properly, be nice to people? It was in this context, that philosophical nugget of goodness, an existential gem came to my aid.

I love a good documentary; an obscure one, a cinematic one, a three-part one (?). But most of all, I like documentaries about personal struggle. From 2019 alone, I would recommend Pavarotti, Maradonna and Apollo 11 – regardless of your interest in opera, football or space travel. So as I started to run out of big releases at the end of last summer and was languishing ill in bed I discovered “The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young”.

It is a 90′ documentary film made in 2014 about a trail-running race in the woods of deepest Tennessee that has taken place every year since 1986. It sounds like it should be another earnest account of people competing with all their might to win an arbitrary physical contest against the odds. And on a basic level it is, but it is so much more…

The race itself which the film immerses the viewer in is SO difficult, that in most years, no one has completed the course. That’s right, it’s not about who will stand on the winners’ podium each year (there isn’t one), but about whether anyone will be able to stand at all. To give you a tiny taster of this, the race is somewhere over 100 miles long, there are no course markings, the start time can be anywhere within a 12hr window between midnight and midday, it has a time limit of 60 hours and requires an amount of climbing that would get you up Mount Everest and back – twice. I need a lie-down again just thinking about it…

As the story unfolds, it seems ridiculous, as if it were established for a wager or for pranks with what must be a bunch of frat-boys coming along each year for the giggle of it all and a good photo opportunity. But what sounds like a big practical joke becomes about people finding out what they can really do. It is about emotional struggle above the physical. It is about intelligence and determination. It is about whether or not you would really panic if you found yourself lost in the woods in freezing fog up an unfamiliar mountain with blisters all over your feet, no water and sleep deprivation. (That’s a yes from me)

Its origin story revolves around the organiser ‘Laz’ (pictured above) who is a great character, but what makes it truly gripping and worth reflecting on for these times of pandemic-induced hardship is how people really find themselves thriving when confronted with adversity. How the 40 entrants have to dig deep, how they help each other and how they keep coming back for more each year. There is very little ego in evidence, so what you see is the kind of empathy that comes to the fore when we are all facing the same overwhelming edifice.

For me, the most apposite reflection comes from one of the runners who believes that “Most people would be better off with more pain in their lives”. He expands saying that pain helps you enjoy the pain-free times more, and that self-imposed adversity helps you prove that if you can push through certain things, then you can achieve others that you might not have even considered trying. All this gave me comfort as I remembered the film from 2019 and dusted it off for a re-watch with my wife, bringing more joy, consternation and a new interpretation in this new light of 2020.

Before the pandemic, one of the most common punching-bags was the so-called ‘Snowflake Generation’. Those darn millennials who’d had it all too easy growing up and now wanted everything their way, would fall over in a stiff breeze etc. Regardless if that is a true or fair analysis, if you believe that a little adversity makes you stronger and even more can make you bullet-proof, then what’s been happening across 2020 could set the planet off on a right foot.

And thank goodness because we have some big global problems to sort – climate change, ocean plastics, land, water and food shortages, and the financial inequality that accompanies it. So who better to solve that than a generation – or even a whole planet-full – of people forged in the fires of this most dire crisis.

One difference between a race and a global pandemic is that we have very little choice but to finish the race we’re running. Hopefully this gigantic thwack of adversity will steer us with passion and purpose back on to a better path. First though, I will need an energy drink before digging deep and attempting my next act of hardship – which by the looks of it is mowing the lawn while cooking the kids tea.