Endings bring new beginnings.

This past weekend was one full of profound endings, however, it also opened way for the possibility of new beginnings.

Through the cold and rain that was yesterday morning, I accomplished one of my greatest feats thus far - my first half marathon. This great accomplishment was the climax of months of training, however, it also brought with it the feeling of something new, that I am about to embark on a new beginning, a fresh chapter in my life. While I may have been training seriously for the past four months, my journey towards the finish line began almost two years ago when I took up running as a way to re-gain the emotional strength I had lost at the hands of someone else. With all emotional strength gone and little hope to gain it back, I decided to pursue a new course and focus on developing my physical strength instead.

Little did I know, but that quest to build muscle and stamina in an effort to fool myself back into confidence was far more successful than I ever could have imagined. In addition to eventually building up my endurance to do a half marathon, I also gained a surprising new sense of confidence that came from over coming what I once thought to be impossible.

As someone who has never been considered my others or herself as an athlete, becoming a "runner" took more effort than simply putting on my running shoes and heading out the door. I was also forced to shed some old attitude and delve deep into the psyche of the runner - which is more than half the battle when it comes to sticking to a regular running regime. Through my determined efforts to build my strength, I became accustomed to the amazing doses of positive energy that I would always return home with. No matter the emotional pain I was experiencing before hand, or the distance that I was able to traverse, as long as I gave 110% and accomplished what I had set out to do, there was nothing that prevented me from feeling better about myself.

Slowly but surely, I saw the improvements - both physically and mentally. My distance increased, as did my speed, but more importantly so did my attitude towards the act at hand. Rather than viewing running simply as a tool to get in or stay in shape, or a way to feel a little less guilty about all those beers I was consuming, running started to take a more permanent place in my life - part of my weekly routine.

Next to the weekly doses of professional therapy I was receiving at the time, running became my own sort of therapy. A safe place I could always go to and shed the negative energy that was weighing down my soul. At my lowest point, there was little that any of my friends or family could do to bring me back up out of despair, but somehow, I always found the strength to pound the pavement. These brief moments of physical relief became my sanctuary that I turned to when I just needed to be alone. Alone and free outside of my existence. Apart, yet fully engulfed by life and the euphoric feeling that I could, with time overcome.

Yesterday, with less than 3km to go, when my legs were throbbing unforgivably, and my ankle felt as thought it was going to collapse any minute, I remembered why - what had brought me to that place of pain in the first place. All those emotions, all that emotional pain - scarred over, but forever with me - that I had managed to overcome, and through that painful nostalgia, I found the strength to carry on. Flooded with emotion, I pushed ahead, 2km, then 1km to go I remembered how far I had come, and how far I had yet to go. With these thoughts in front of my, I pursued the finish line with every once of strength in my body, and with these thoughts I crossed the finish line with an incredibly sense of pride.

I have come a long way and I found the strength to cross the finish line from within. Yesterday was not just the end of a race, it was the end up something much more. That finish line - my first finish line - drew an imaginary divide between my life now and my life then. Then has passed, you are gone and I am stronger for it. Now is the time to look forward to a future based on personal strength, determination and courage to face all that I do not know. Now is the time to look towards new beginnings.

I can already see my next finish line.

That which lies beyond point zero.

There are moments in life when you can no longer avoid the unavoidable. When imagination collides with reality, releasing all anxieties and fears out into the open like a jar of spilled jelly beans. A rainbow of colours below, tempting you with their nostalgic fruit-like textures, yet also warning of the impending sickness that will come with consuming them all in one single trail.

The sense of awakening I am currently experiencing can be likened to nothing other than nausea. This is the true Heiddegarian angst - the moment when the truth is peeled back and I am left staring into its deepest core.

This moment - like other moments profound existential moments I have experienced in life - was the narrative climax of a long winding process. An intricate web of experiences, personal thoughts, literary inspirations and finally memory. At this moment I am being reminded of the true concerns and liabilities that lie within me, but now the incurring is problem arises: what do I do next?

My fear is that struggle with stalling panic. The desire to run is unleashed, but without a place to run to I am stuck treading in my own anxieties. In thoughts like these, thought truly does stall action as I fondly recall the words of Sartre, however in this instance I refuse to become immobilized.

This current sense of anxeity has been accumulating for some time now - months perhaps - yet I must congradulate myself on doing a fine job of ignoring the details. However, after reading Chris Hedges article "The Zero Point of Systemic Collapse" - published in adbusters - I was fully awakened to the truths I have been hiding my sensitive mind from for so many months now. I don't want to run any further - and can no longer run - but instead am ready to face the necessity for action and a motion to move forward into a new unknown territory.

While Hedges article - so poignantly encompassing the sentiment of collapse that is presently consuming me - can be held responsible for this blog post, there are several other incidences that are worth recounting, such as yesterday's ride in transit where I finished Yann Martel's new novel "Beatrice and Virgil." Charmingly titled to encompass the central compassion of the story, Martel's novel is a brilliant attempt to take yet another attempt at explaining the ultimate form of the unexplainable - the Holocaust. However, rather than simply attempting yet another single person narrative, Martel uses his form to explain the absurdity in any attempt to unlock the secrets behind mankind's greatest and most horrifying mystery.

In reading and finishing Beatrice and Virgil - I was left feeling with my own curiosity as to why any human being full of sense even attempts to grapple with these horrors. Through these shamed curiosities (for, as one who is living in the century beyond this time of evil what right do I have to even try to understand?), I recalled some non-fiction encounters I had with the holocaust, notably with those of Bruno Bettelheim whose own work brought me to tears through a true understanding of suicide. While some may view suicide as the ultimate renunciation of hope for humanity, his interpretation brought light to the power of suicide to act as one great last action of self determination, one final moment of glory in which one displays the ultimate form of resistance, a resistance against life itself.

Resistance is at the core of Hedges' article. Though this is not a resistance against life, but rather a resistance against the systematic life we are told to live - the life we are sold and the life we willingly consume.

Systemic living - this is the life I run from, and the one I fear will consume me against my will. The life I try to resist, yet often find myself gravitating towards through fear. Fear of not belonging, fear of never knowing "happiness," fear of failure.

And yes, failure is possible - this is a reality I must learn to confront, though Hughes' realism reminds use that "we must continue to resist, but do so now with the discomforting realization that significant change will probably never occur in our lifetime." The real fear lies in not knowing - not knowing whether what you are doing has true value or not. In a hyper-material culture all we know is what we see, though resistance is the ultimate form of alienation, all we know is who we are without the mirror of society to view our reflection in.

On the verge of hopelessness, Hughes does end with a moral compass that redirects us towards the invaluable hope of a moral intellectualism: "to give up acts of resistance is spiritual and intellectual death. It is to surrender to the dehumanizing ideology of totalitarian capitalism. Acts of resistance keep alive another narrative, sustain our integrity and empower others who we may never meet to stand up and carry the flame we pass to them."

And with these words of I will sleep tonight. It may not be a peaceful sleep, but it will be a hopeful one wherein lies hope for a de-systematized world where we are free to uncover our humanity, not buy it; where a sense of spiritual intellectualism reigns free as the highest order, not capitalism; and finally one where we are taught to value that internal truths are what define us, not our ability to give into the systemic powers that enslave us.