running

It’s a Marathon AND a Sprint

~ jjebbia ~ 2 Comments
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PC: Jose Revuelta, Flea Market Comics. Check out more art here. 

I left work early on Wednesday, went home, and wept. I just bawled. It was all too much. And it was only Wednesday.

Our campus observed Holocaust Remembrance Week this past week. On Friday, we hosted a dialogue about the future of politics in the United States. I see the exhaustion. I see the fear. I see the overwhelming sense of hopelessness, and I admit: I feel it too.

Not for myself. One of the ickiest thoughts that has floated through my overcrowded brain this week was “if I did nothing, if I had no idea what was happening in our country…I would be blissfully ignorant. I could go about my daily tasks and probably notice nothing. And I heard phrases like, “It’ll be ok, he’s just crazy..” or “Stay strong!” UGH. I understand the desire to deescalate a situation for coping sake, but…I just can’t. This is horrible. So many people are really, really suffering. And as a Buddhist I know, that suffering begets suffering, and it affects us all.

Of course my students feel overwhelmed and in despair. There is no end in sight. It feels as though we are fighting not only an uphill battle, but one behind a giant steel wall! (sorry, that was just too real.) I try to tell myself to keep working, keep putting on a strong face for my students that I love, but on Wednesday I just couldn’t any longer. Recognizing when we need to take a moment to breathe is important, because the situation is both urgent and will be a long haul.

I ran 16 miles today, the most I have ever run. I felt great: there were thousands of people on the course today. Every few miles a group was giving away water and snacks. I ran the last half of the course with a new friend who teaches near my home in Boston. Not bad for a self-care Saturday.

When I got home, I looked at my training schedule. Almost half way through the 18 weeks before the big race day. Suddenly I felt anxious: The mileage only increases. I will need to carve out more time and need more strength to keep to my plan. I have to be efficient, make good food choices, and no matter what, not give up. There is no skipping a day, even in the rain, the snow, after eating too much cake.

Consider this time a marathon AND a sprint: the urgency is NOW, dammit. Shit already hit the fan and is now spreading around the room. I think my marathon training is symbolic of the work cut out for me and the people I look up to, leading the charge. We’ve got to contribute in every way possible and not skip a day. At the same time, we need to suck down that weird GU to stay fueled- take moments of rest to recharge. And there are others among us, at every step. Our paces may be different but we’re running toward the same place. I’m sustaining my energy off the communities I graciously get to find solace in, and take wisdom from. One foot in front of the other.

I don’t have any words of wisdom today, or even a “let’s be hopeful!” message, except that I know some pretty damn amazing people working their asses off and I’m lucky to call myself a fan/supporter/hopeful ally (NOT ally- working toward it). Revolutionary Love today, every day.

 

Womens’ March: How Art Will Save Us

~ jjebbia ~ 2 Comments

On Thursday evening, my writing class got real. We talked about self-care through the arduous process. The craft of writing, especially memoir and personal non-fiction, is wrought with danger. We bring our most vulnerable pieces forward, public: here is my brokenness. Of course, we couldn’t help talking about what would happen the next day.

I’ve never considered myself an artist. My sister, yes- at age 10, people asked to buy her paintings. She has that unique ability to make animals (her favorite subject) look real on the canvas. The closest I’ve come to pursuing a career in fine art is my wearing wild clothing in many different colors. Regardless, my appreciation for art has never waned. I find art soothing, a reminder that there are myriad ways to express our pain, joy, and everything in between. Words are my “art,” and sometimes words fall short. Nevertheless, I find myself consumed in books much of the time, looking for inspiration in my own craft.

Running for me has also become an art. Yesterday I joined a marathon running group and headed to Riverside for an 11-mile run. We faced the notorious Newton Hills: miles 17-21 on the Boston Marathon course. The final uphill portion has earned the name “Heartbreak Hill”, on which runners have struggled since the beginning of time (ok, no. But since the beginning of the Boston Marathon, yes) after some intense downhill for the first half of the course. For the last year, I’ve run alone the majority of training, but this time I was transformed by the power of running with others.

Yesterday I learned that running is so personal, of course, but requires the art of community building. Thousands of people climbed the hills yesterday, and as I clomped by Boston College’s campus I marveled at the pleasantries exchanged between strangers, even though we all must have felt exhausted (my knees were screaming at me).

As I neared the end of the run at Fenway Park, I started to see the signs. I mean the actual signs people were carrying to the march. Some were bigger than me! And the sass, oh the sass. It dawned on me: In this time of great divide, Art will save us.

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Because the trains were packed, I decided walking another mile and a half wouldn’t kill me. There were more and more signs as the crowd neared Boston Common. Then I saw the buses.

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Buses and buses and BUSES. And beyond the buses, a sea of pink hats. The entire Boston Common, the same park I had run through only days before, was entirely covered in bodies. I had never seen anything like it.

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I admit to feeling a bit disappointed the previous day. Many of my students, colleagues, and friends had made the trek to our nation’s capitol to literally March on Washington. Why didn’t I get my act together to witness history? Looking before this very crowd, I knew this was where I was meant to be. Boston: the runner’s city, the home of some of the first abolitionists, the site of the first siege that began the Revolution. Scrolling through Facebook and Twitter my heart leaped again: my beloved Chicago, home for three years, the place I met my love, the city of incredible hospitality, had SHUT DOWN THEIR OWN MARCH BECAUSE SO MANY PEOPLE CAME OUT. BOOM. And THEN- my one and only home, the place my heart stays, the City of Angels, rocked the entirety of downtown with signs in multiple languages. My partner and I exchanged pictures of the best signs and posters around us. Sister marches around the world (yes, the world!) all the way to Antarctica popped up in my newsfeeds.

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Art will save us. Not the paper, the glitter, or the sass (though the humor really enlivened us) but the creativity. You cannot regulate art, you cannot control the visions of the innovative. And in these days, I believe that the creativity we witnessed this past week gives us fire to keep finding alternative ways of action. I’m claiming myself an artist. I will strive to be creative and think big. I’m so thrilled by the showing up for each other yesterday- it’s one day, and we’ve got quite a few more. Blessings to the artists, you are leading us.

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Acknowledging a Mistake, Finishing a Race.

~ jjebbia ~ Leave a comment

Many of my fellow writers (and others) have shared that they feel lost for words- what do we add to the conversation this week, especially as we still feel a sense of shock? I really want to sit with that tension, especially to state that I don’t feel like I can give any wisdom or say anything inspiring like, “it’s going to be ok.” What does that mean, “it’s going to be ok”? I decided that sharing two things I learnedM specifically as a white person this week may be helpful. This post isn’t well-written or even logically in order, which reflects the sentiment.

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PC: Annie Spratt

Tuesday of course was a day of fatigue for me and pretty much everyone at work, most especially the students. My colleague did an amazing job of creating a space for the community to come dialogue and for many, this was the first space they could do that. I listened to my students, my beloved Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, unaffiliated students, share their emotions as well as they could. There were certainly tears. And there was love. There was an unabashed, boundless, courageous love that filled the room. I felt it in every hug, every handshake, even the way we looked at each other. As one of the dialogue facilitators, much of what was said echoed my emotions and fears, but I didn’t share.

That evening, I got a call from a really good friend who led the USC Interfaith Council with me. We threw out suggestions for what we could do on our campuses and how we knew folks were mobilizing already. It felt really good to talk to him. After we finished our call I went on a run and listened to Valarie Kaur speak dazzling beautiful and powerful words on our Revolutionary Love Conference Call. She echoed much of what I and many were feeling and told us to think about this moment as birth: first, there is darkness. Then, there is beginning, and creating, and building. One of the Revolutionary Love Fellows shared a heartbreaking reflection on feeling like a failure to our country, and I sobbed as I ran the last few steps to my door. The rest of my evening was pretty quiet- I tried to write something for National Novel Writing Month, to keep up my word count.

On Thursday at our Spiritual Advisors’ Meeting, I realized too late that I hadn’t processed my own feelings fully, especially not out loud. The idea that a man with a track record of normalizing sexual harassment and assault will control decisions and moreover, messages to people in our nation that say “women’s bodies are up for grabs” elicits a significant level of panic for me. I mention this for personal reasons, but also cannot forgive the messaging that has normalized homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, the fact that Black Lives don’t really Matter. Further, to lose my friends who are undocumented, DACA-mented, and/or are immigrants in the blink of an eye feels shattering- it’s as if what I wrote about in college, the rounding up of Japanese Americans and immigrants and physically removing them is coming back to haunt us. So, in a group of 20 people from different faith traditions, I sobbed. I told them that I was scared. That I had been ignorant for being critical of interfaith communities who practice a “basic” understanding of what interfaith is because clearly- we need to encourage any positive interfaith action in full force. I told them the students were my heroes this week. They fricking SHOWED UP for each other, despite their fear and anger. And I made it about me, which I shouldn’t have done. I cried white tears, and learned the necessity of self-care this week. It was an important lesson to learn.

This weekend I flew home to LA to run a 10K and half marathon at Disneyland. The theme of the weekend was Superheroes, which felt all too necessary. Home is strange for me right now- my family did not vote for the candidate I wanted to see in the Oval Office, and have been vocal about their dismissal of people who feel afraid and angry. I’ve worked on asking open questions about why they made their choice, and tried to push back with some counter ideas to their analysis. They are my family and I love them, and we don’t agree. I’m going to sit with that discomfort for some time.

This morning I finished my second half marathon race. This weekend was dedicated to self-care because, as noted above, I learned an important lesson. You ran 13.1 miles for self-care? Indeed, while excruciating at points and not what I love doing at 5:30 am every Sunday, the race was something to which I looked forward and for which I trained over the past 12 weeks. Running is a practice for me, it helps me stay focused and motivated. The race started in the dark and just before we sang the National Anthem, I thought: this is what an intentional community looks like.

Around me, there were people who looked like me and people who didn’t. There was a man next to me who told me he came from Japan for this race and donned a full Minnie Mouse dress and ears to run. “You look so great!” people told him. Four runners in wheelchairs started the entire race. There were people over the age of 70, people from Kansas and Oregon and Australia, people of size and people who were very slender, people who had never run a half marathon before. There was a man who had made the US Olympic Marathon Trials. The course was tough- not hilly, but all asphalt, and as the sun rose it got warmer. For the hour and forty five minutes I struggled through that darn course, people encouraged me unflaggingly. Even in the last 2 miles, we gave each other thumbs up and simple, “you got this!” greetings. It felt like a community. Not perfect, not all the same, just people sharing a goal.

I’m going to focus on simple relationship building in the next few weeks. Finishing this race and thinking about the necessity of building bridges, the dire, urgent necessity, is where I want to start. I’m going to keep reading, keep asking my friends and students how they are feeling, keep supporting. And I will make mistakes, and try my best to write about them in a way that encourages learning.

#RevolutionaryLove

Running in New York City

~ jjebbia ~ Leave a comment

Ah, the fresh smell of filth only semi-recognizable. We arrived in NYC Saturday afternoon and hauled our luggage 6 blocks to the Pod Hotel. A pod hotel offers you a bed that fills the whole room with some storage underneath and a box bathroom. But you can’t complain about being right at 39th and Lexington, right?

We spent the weekend wandering around Art Museums and eating ramen and bao buns that one cannot find in Boston. Every day we walked over 30,000 steps. Our feet ached. We munched on sweets from Milk Bar and Levain Bakery until my throat scratched from sugar overload. I obnoxiously posted pictures of sunsets atop tall buildings on my Instagram. #NYCshortweekend.


On Sunday we hiked all the way from our hotel to the Guggenheim, a museum I had never visited before, and then through Central Park to the American Museum of Natural History. As we trudged through Central Park with dampened t-shirts (it was about 97 F without humidity), I watched the runners on the road as they headed south. Some of them had flashy neon shorts and tank tops, while others donned old grey shirts with track shorts and mid-calf white socks. I marveled at every single person brave enough to sweat it out in that heat.

I have been a runner for almost 14 years now. As a freshman in high school, I joined the cross country team because my dad said it would help me get in shape for basketball. Funnily enough, I ended up not even playing basketball my senior year. But I ran every year, and constantly felt inadequate. My body was larger than my teammates’ and it took more time for me to carry it, mile by mile. 3 miles always felt horrendously long. I remember secretly rejoicing when my IT band became inflamed and I had to take a month off running. Every summer I promised to train and be more prepared for the season, but my times never improved. Yet every year, I ran in my little red shorts and tank top and counted down the number of races left to complete.

The funny thing is, I’ve never stopped running, even though there are times I really hate it. Every few months since high school, my body would get a strange craving to stretch my legs and pound the pavement. I would always feel so sore after running when I hadn’t in so long. The next day, I’d hit my legs until the lactic acid started to move, and I’d be off. The music in my earbuds has ranged from Incubus to Turkish pop stars.

When my friend Taylor asked me (ok, challenged me) to run a half marathon almost a year ago, I scoffed. The longest I had ever ran without stopping was about seven miles, and that was torture. I figured I would start training, have a good few weeks, and then like many initially titillating hobbies, I would find something better to do like bake low-carb cheesecake. But November became December and then the New Year came, and I ran a mile longer every week. The last few weeks in February I ran 11 or 12 miles on Saturdays. I couldn’t believe it- the chubby last-to-finish high schooler was actually doing this! Just as the cherry blossoms bloomed, I finished the half marathon in Washington, D.C. with my friends Taylor, Areeba and Audrey. We ate a big, much deserved brunch after crossing the finish line.

When I see anyone running (on purpose), my respect for the person skyrockets. Perhaps it’s because I have learned how much practice running takes. “It’s just one foot in front of the other,” our coach at the treadmill studio shouts as we sprint for 30 seconds. Sometimes the simplest action takes the most practice. When we meditate, we simply sit on a cushion and stay still. The practice is letting ourselves stay purely in this moment. It can be easy to rush through life with distractions at every turn, but being alone with ourselves can feel excruciating.

Spending the weekend in New York was a blessing, a much-needed distraction from the ever-approaching school year mayhem. I felt a little sad on the bus back home because we our fun had ended so soon. I thought about the runners in the park. If we, runners, ran for the finish, we would quickly give up and find something more enjoyable to do like barre or hip hop yoga. We run because we enjoy the challenge, we thrive on finding presence in the pain. As Haruki Murakami wrote in his memoir about training for the New York City Marathon, “pain is inevitable…but suffering if optional.” Arriving back in our humble Boston studio, I collapsed on the bed and massaged my feet.