I had a painful bout of gout (I love saying that) about 3 years ago after a Cancun vacation. I blame it on the drinking and rich foods and hope it's a one time thing. Last week, my left foot hurt like it was twisted but I couldn't remember how, it is just too frightening to even think about that... Yesterday, after a full week without exercise, I finally felt very little pain walking and decided to bike to the beach. Cycling has become the new golf and Ocean Blvd is full of slightly over weighed cyclists on $5,000 bikes, good time to sandbag on my 30 pound touring bike wearing my Levi's cutoffs, except this time I couldn't keep up with the fat cyclists.
In the afternoon, I thought I would test my foot running instead. Aided by runner's high, the epiphany I attained during the run was: "long term is good, short term is evil". It began with the thought that the pain could be stopped by a pill but that's not a good solution. Likewise, eating a pint of ice cream is good in the short term but bad in the long term. Money matters? Same sort of reasoning applies, to us Chinese anyways. It also extends to religions, suffer in this life for eternal life or reincarnation. We are making the same trade-offs and mechanically labeling short term gratifications "bad" and long term gains "good". Too easy, fuck Nietzsche, good and evil is this simple!
Soon the pain returned and I had to stop after 4.4 miles and everything about life became clear as mud again. 3 hours of exercising was 12% of yesterday, I doubt the eventual long term payoff would be anywhere near 10%, the effort is most likely a net loss. In the famous Chinese Zen story 當頭棒喝 , the monk in question was hit hard in the head 3 times before his epiphany came, each blow was accompanied by loud shouting. I consider my painful exercise day as my 1st installment.
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