My Bhagavad-Gita Moment Before a 70.3…
It feels somewhat absurd to be sitting at a coffee shop reading the Bhagavad-Gita and thinking, “You know what? This ancient spiritual wisdom about duty, suffering, and the human condition really applies to me and my recreational triathlon.”
To be clear, Arjuna was standing on a battlefield, looking across at relatives, teachers, and friends, facing a conflict that would shape the future of a kingdom.
I am looking at a race course in Rockford and thinking, “That run is going to be really unpleasant.”
The stakes are not exactly the same. And yet, the deeper problem is surprisingly familiar.
For the last two weeks, I have been anxious about this race. Not because I have not trained. I have completed several 70.3 races. I have ridden the course twice. I have swum the distance. I have put in the hours.
The truth is simpler: I am afraid of suffering.
Not the dramatic movie-soundtrack kind of suffering. The very ordinary kind that arrives around mile eight and a half of a half-marathon when your legs begin negotiating a ceasefire, your brain starts offering very reasonable arguments for stopping, and every person who passes you seems to be having a wonderful day.
(They are probably not.)
The Bhagavad-Gita has a remarkably practical answer.
Krishna tells Arjuna:
“You have a right to your actions, but not to the fruits of your actions.”
In other words, focus on what is yours to control and release what is not.
I control:
- My preparation.
- My pacing.
- My fueling.
- My attitude.
- My next stroke, pedal stroke, and step.
I do not control:
- My finishing time.
- My place in my age group.
- The weather.
- Whether someone who looks like he was built in a laboratory specifically for endurance sports goes flying past me on the run.
- Whether the race decides to hand me a difficult day.
My anxiety has spent a lot of time camping out in that second list. I have been suffering Sunday’s pain for the last two weeks. That seems like a poor bargain.
The Gita also describes the ideal of the “steady person” – someone who remains balanced in success and failure, pleasure and pain, praise and criticism. That does not mean a steady person never hurts. A steady person in a 70.3 does not float through the run saying, “This is delightful. I hope it lasts forever.”
A steady person says:
“This is the hard part. I knew it was coming. I am still here.”
And maybe that is the real challenge of this race.
Not whether I can finish. I have done that before.
Not whether I can run every mile with a smile on my face. That would frankly be suspicious.
The challenge is whether I can take all those books I have been reading this year and actually use them.
- Epictetus tells me to focus on what I control.
- Kant tells me to do my duty.
- Emerson tells me to trust myself.
- And now the Bhagavad-Gita tells me to act without attachment to the outcome.
It would be a shame to spend the last few months reading the Harvard Classics only to ignore them when I need them most. So on Sunday, when the discomfort arrives—and I have no doubt it will—I want to remember a very ancient lesson applied to a very modern problem.
One stroke.
One pedal stroke.
One step.
Do the work.
Let go of the outcome.