The Old Man of Running

In response to Spencer's post regarding a book list, I suggested The Old Man and the Sea. You probably don't need me to remind you, but "He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish." When I first, second and third read the book I enjoyed the story and Hemingway's pathbreaking writing style. Starting maybe with read number four I began to appreciate the old man as a stoic ideal. I need to read it again for the lesson of the old man's remaining faithful to a process that was wisely implemented but when followed takes him over peaks (once catching "big ones every day for three weeks") and through valleys (once he "went eighty-seven days without fish"). What's remarkable about the old man is that he is failing but he is not a failure.

The old man woke every day in the dark. He loaded his gear in the boat. He drank coffee from condensed milk cans. Even after 84 days "[h]is hope and his confidence had never gone. But now they were freshening as when the breeze rises." When he was fishing, he kept his lines "straighter than anyone did, so that at each level in the darkness of the stream there would be a bait waiting exactly where he wished it to be for any fish that swam there."

The old man would make a great runner. A change of props and he's not launching a skiff into the Gulf Stream. He's following a trail deep into the woods or toeing the line at a race. After 84 days this one might be his, or it might not. But although his legs are weary "his eyes . . . [a]re the same color as the sea and [a]re cheerful and undefeated."