Phenomenology of Running

Pay close enough attention to running and it ceases to be “running.” Legs, too, cease to be legs.” Ditto: breathing and “breathing”; body and “body”; experience and “experience.” Running, like anything, is inscrutable but from a distance. To scrutinize is to apply language, to chunk experience, to impose stases on dynamic processes. That is, it takes us from running to “running,” from experience to concept. But while some cases clearly are running and some cases clearly are not, there are gray areas on the edges of the concept that have no bearing on experience as such. Is that “running” or is it “jogging”? Is that “running” or is that “playing”? Is that “running” or is that “actively not falling down”? Call it what you want to, the ground beneath the runner’s feet is the ground of experience. And what’s happening doesn’t feel like anything, it just feels.