Perhaps all our troubles - all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we can't overcome - began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that ignoring our natural instincts leads to various personal and societal issues.
Christopher McDougall emphasizes the importance of embracing our natural, active state as 'Running People.' He argues that many of society's troubles, such as violence, obesity, and mental health issues, arise when we deny our inherent nature to move and be active. By neglecting this fundamental aspect of ourselves, the consequences manifest in adverse ways.
In practice
In a motivational speech about healthy living, this quote might illustrate the importance of physical activity.
Humans are built for endurance, not speed. We're awful sprinters compared to every other animal. We try to run our races as if they were speed races, but they are not. They're endurance races. Even a marathon, the way it's run now, it's not an endurance contest.
I have the idea that running shoes are based on a kind of cult idea - that our feet are flawed and we need shoes to correct those flaws. The shoe companies are in the business of selling shoes. But there's no evidence from running shoe manufacturers that they're right. There's no scientific data that running shoes reduce injury.
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.
Know why people run marathons? …Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles, Starry Night, intravascular surgery; they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human — which means its a superpower all humans posses.
Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain.
Anyone can do running. Running should be easy. It should be fun. It should include everyone. It shouldn't be a punishment for eating cheesecake, which is what we've turned it into.
Irony and pity are two good counselors: one, in smiling, makes life pleasurable; the other, who cries, makes it sacred.
The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. You can't weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.
Our torments also may in length of time Become our Elements.
Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.
Even while writing about foreign places, I have been in a way writing about America, because that's the subject that interests me the most. I'm attached to it, critical, but it's definitely my country, and maybe even more so when I'm overseas.
Nothing is sadder than laughter; nothing more beautiful, more magnificent, more uplifting and enriching than the terror of deep despair.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.