while it lasts

it has been a little bit extreme in terms of weather for the past few days - well, not proper extreme but enough for me - which means temperatures around -20 degrees celsius. to be honest it's not quite as bad as it sounds,  i'm currently inland and therefore there is little to no wind. still air with -15 is much easier to handle than -8 with strong wind, hands down; but it still does require some adjusting and certain things have to be taken into consideration when running in such low temperatures.

the cold is not really a problem when you run for about an hour; it's short enough time to stay warm due to the body heat generated by the movement. all you need is a few layers and you're good to go; the tricky bits are really your hands and face. i don't know about other people but for me it seems that my hands (fingers) get frozen very easily, and that is a very uncomfortable feeling, even worse than face freeze - which tends to happen as well. but like said, when the length of the run stays in about an hour even these don't really pose very big problems, and longer runs than that i don't do when it is this cold - i am too keen to be comfortable for that.

but i have to say, even if there is some strange fascination in running in a cold weather, i can't say that it is my favourite conditions. and certainly when i leave finland (for good? for now) in a little bit over a month, this coldness and darkness are amongst the things i won't be missing any time soon.

because i want to

why do we want the things we do? is it all learnt or a result of some kind of external influence; or is there some kind of inner driver that steers us into whatever direction? if so, what is behind this driver and what sets its goals? a coincidence? can you influence what you want - can you cease to look after something you previously considered worth striving for, or can you just decide to go for something and it that case, when does the decision to want something become automated so that you no longer view is as a conscious choice?

when is a want real? how can you tell a difference between the things you are supposed to want or you think you want because of some other motivator and the ones that you actually do? if you tell yourself long enough, do the first two become the third?

our wants is what really makes this world turn. the want to do something and be something, the want to be in a place you currently are not. or maybe, in some cases, to remain in the place where you are; but even that takes constant effort. the day when you don't want anything is the day when nothing can touch you, move you, hurt you; but it is also the day when nothing can bring you much joy or happiness. it is a static state, a one i don't know is possible or even desirable achieve; it might as well be the day you're dead.

but the question i would really like to know the answer to is that if you want something, is it enough? does that want in you, if it is genuine, is that enough to make the thing you want happen? does it make you so that it is possible to achieve the thing that you want?

if you just want it bad enough?

almost there

so it's almost christmas and all. not a devote to the occasion itself but i do like the luxury of having a few days off; especially as the past week or two have been  particularly hectic work-wise. 

today i'm flying to stockholm for a few days to meet a friend i haven't seen in years. the joy of that aside, i actually feel rather irritated by the fact that i have to take two days off from running. this is mainly because these days i feel the effect of it more strongly than normally - the days when i don't run are really dreadful, i feel irritated and restless and overall just not right. and more, i really don't wake up at all if i don't break a sweat in the morning - for example on tuesday i had to come to the office super early so i moved the exercise regime into the evening, and that day was just not good at all. it feels like being stuck in tar surrounded by a cloud of smoke that fills your head and eyes and lungs; and the tiredness i experience those days is very different kind to the type of tiredness you get from actually doing something.

but yeah, i guess i'll live. it's only two days. and a holiday.

so merry christmas to you all!

deeper down the rabbit hole

"that's where i draw the line."

because there always is one, isn't there, a line, your personal maximum. a line of how much you can and will take, a line of your moral and of your integrity, a line you refuse to cross; a line on the other side of which you can't ever imagine being.

there is so much lines and they are set in a way that they form a web, a spider web of what is your limits and borders. outside these lines you think that you are not you, that these lines are what you are made of, that they create the structure inside which you are defined. you don't know what you would be without these lines, maybe you haven't even thought about it, but you surely wouldn't be you any more; because in these lines you end.

they draw you, very much like an artist would, create you from the blank of a paper; the lines, your lines, the artwork of you. but different to a drawing where the lines are, once drawn, immobile, your lines are flexible. there are lines you want to push, move further, and there are lines beyond which you are not willing to go. and what would happen if you would, if you were to cross a line you held holy, what would happen?

would you break? would the web of your lines collapse, would your mind derange, would everything that is you escape through the hole created by that broken line? would you die?

of course you wouldn't. maybe you would find out that the line wasn't there after all, that you had just thought it to be there; and now, once in a place you thought to be on the other side, you realise that the real line is much further. and maybe this realisation makes you stronger, or it may make you something else entirely, but what it makes you for sure is something you didn't previously thought you could or should be.

and once you are on the other side of that line, and it doesn't really matter if it was really there in the first place or whether you just thought it to be - once you are there, the new line is now somewhere further, and once the line is further there is no way for it to come closer again; there is no way you will be the same person again. this is both fantastic and frightening, and it is the cause of the greatest of achievements and most horrible of actions; the simple fact that the lines always move; but they move only further.

i do

do you ever wonder, between the moments of your life and in the midst of your reactions, whenever you feel justified or mistreated or whatever it is that happens to be flushing through your nerve system; do you ever stop to think how it transfers to the outside? do you ever ask yourself what is the projection you give; and do you ever remember that your experience is not the only one?

it's a constant flux of emotions, of feelings and responses; everything reflecting from the individual background and filtering through the fabric that is your life so far. words can never relay this experience, you can never really truly explain how you see and feel things. a word is a symbol, a rough draft of something that cannot be described in more detail. it is the personal experience that sets the finesse of an expression, that colours the words and adds the unique amount of weight to them.

so when you say love, it doesn't mean the same thing at all when your loved one says it; because your experience of love is different to theirs. when you say hate it has an entirely different content than the hate of your enemy; because for them, hate means something that it can never mean to you. and when you say sorry it might not matter any more because the damage is already done; the weight of your words in the reality of another can be too heavy to bear.

so does it ever intrigue you how you appear; do you ever think that what you say is not what other people hear? and does it ever overwhelm you, this individual experience, this life, the details and wholeness of which you can't ever share? and do you, at the same time, find it comforting - that no matter what, this is yours, and it is right, and even if there are billions of rights in the world, as many as there are wrongs - that this right and this wrong, they are yours and they are you, and that is just simply incredible?