I feel them closer when I run

I run.

I’ve been a runner for over a decade, although not consistently. I admit I’m not particularly good at running. I’m slow, even at my peak. People who pick up the sport and stick with it for just a few months tend to run farther and faster than me. There are other sports that would be better suited for me, given my build, but this is the one I stick with. I don’t know how to explain it. I love running, except for when I hate it, but actually, even when I hate it.

When I run, I feel the world all around me. I’m moving through it faster than I do normally, and my senses have to work double to keep up. Every minute, I’m seeing more, hearing more, smelling more, and feeling more than I do when I’m not running. My thoughts work harder, my memories rush in, my emotions are heightened. When I run, the world is literally at my feet, and I’m free.

My father taught me to run. That is to say, I went running with him one time when I was a kid, and then I quit, but he taught me mechanics and he gave me advice that helped me pick up the sport again when I was ready, when it was too late to run with him. When I run, I feel him closer to me.

After October 7th, there were several grassroots initiatives that sprang up: Run for their lives, Run in their memory, Run for their sakes. Loosely organized running events on city paths or nature trails, printed t-shirts and posters with the names of hostages and the plea to bring them home now. Afterwards, sometimes, a survivor or a relative would speak. There was no practical action being taken; running 8 or 16 or 24 kilometers doesn’t bring anyone home faster. But when I run, I feel them closer to me.

I went to Ori Danino’s funeral two days ago. I heard his brother and his grandfather eulogize him. Ori Danino escaped from the slaughter at the Nova festival, drove and made it to safety, but when he realized that his friends, Maya, Itay, and Omer, were still in danger, he turned around. Everyone I heard speak at his funeral talked about this choice. They said, “You could have kept going, but that wasn’t you.”

When I run, my thoughts are louder than anything else. Even if I’m listening to music, it’s just a backdrop. The wind whistling past my ears and the thump of my heartbeat mash together with whatever comes through the headphones and turns it into white noise in my brain. And my thoughts run free with me.

Thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands, have listened to the recording of Maya and Itay Regev’s father on the phone with her as they were being shot at by terrorists. “Where are you?” he asked Maya. “I’m coming to get you now; send me your location.” Over and over and over: Send me your location. But it was too late; he wasn’t able to reach them. Ori Danino reached them — had already reached them by that point. We’ll never know what would have happened if he hadn’t, but by some miracle, Maya and Itay eventually came back home to their parents. (Omer is still held captive; I pray that he will return home safely.)

None of these people asked to be household names. None of these people knows who I am, but I felt joy for those of them who came home, and I felt gutted for those whose deaths were announced, and I pray and hope for the ones who don’t know yet what their fates will be, that all of them will return home safely to their families and friends.

“Finally, you are free,” Rachel Goldberg-Polin said to her son Hersh at his funeral on Monday.

We wish he were the other kind of free. We wish he were free like Noa Argamani, free to hug his loved ones and dance again. But “would have been” is futile; I’ve been there.

My father wasn’t murdered. It’s completely plausible that he wasn’t scared, that he didn’t know it was coming, and that it wasn’t painful. Those are things he doesn’t have in common with Hersh and Ori and Carmel and Alex and Eden and Almog, things that make it feel almost disrespectful to mention him in the same paragraph as them.

When I run, I feel him closer to me.

When I run, I pay attention to the contact each time my foot touches the ground, every different type of surface I’m moving on, every landscape in front of me. I note my posture, the placement of my shoulder blades and of my arms and the rate of my footfalls. I see the children walking to school, the dog owners out with their dogs, the cyclists who whiz by me and the other runners who — let’s be honest — also whiz by me, the older people out to get some fresh air, sitting on the benches and people-watching. The expression “to cross paths” feels more meaningful on a run, and I can’t explain it. When I run, I’m connected to the world, not just the time and space that I occupy at that moment but also the past and future, everywhere.

And sometimes, like this morning, it all hits me at once, the freedom that comes with running that we take for granted, the fact that some of them will never run again, and some of them are trapped in small dark places and they don’t know what will become of them. And I can’t breathe, but I run, and I gasp for air while snot runs out my nose and I wipe it on my shirt and I keep running, and I feel that I’m accompanied by Ori and Eden and Hersh and Almog and Alex and Carmel and Amit and Tiferet and Aner and Johnny and Tamar and Shahar and Arbel and Omer and Yosef and Nathanel and Noa and Itay and Avraham and Chaim and Eden and so many others. All of these people who were so much more than their last days or months on earth, who were entire worlds unto themselves.

Finally, you are free.