Born to Run: How Exercise Expanded My World and Sharpened My Mind
For years, one of my defining habits has been collecting tiny facts. I never fully grew out of the “show-and-tell” mindset many of us had as kids. I love diving into a topic for a couple of weeks, gathering as many stories as possible, and then turning to friends with, “Did you know …?”
If that comes off as smug, it’s probably because I am a bit that way. At least I balance it with quirky anecdotes—like the life of Ludwig von Köchel, the man who created the system for organizing Mozart’s works (and who was also a skilled botanist). It doesn’t matter what the subject is: this year, I scarfed down back-to-back biographies of Malcolm X, then stumbled upon the Swedish band Bob Hund, whose songs are in a language I don’t speak. I could even give a mini university lecture about them if anyone cared (my email is on my site).
The reason for these scattered research interests isn’t a pure love of knowledge alone. It’s the high I feel when I realize how much I don’t know. That thrill happens before I buy a biography or read a single article. It’s the moment I confront my own ignorance and witness the world suddenly and dramatically widen. In short: when I recognize I’m clueless, my life’s landscape grows.
For a long time, I believed this high lived only in literary pursuits. Then I discovered running.
Running is usually framed as a purely physical activity, which is probably why I resisted it for so long. Yet while I’ve felt tangible changes in my body since I began running almost daily, the more striking shifts have been inward—closer acquaintance with my own mind, especially my own ignorance.
Almost every run reaches a point where I think, I literally cannot go on. That moment finds a new depth as the miles progress, and it always arrives. I’m not sure I’ll ever outrun it. It’s as certain as death and taxes, with the stubborn finality that feels almost oppressive. When that thought comes, it seems absolute, and every muscle in my body urges me to stop.
Yet, almost immediately, another thought follows: I bet you can keep going. Suddenly I realize that what I once believed to be true isn’t bound by certainty. I realize I spend a lot of life blind to immense beauty and knowledge just a book away, and blind to what I’m capable of achieving. Time and again, I prove I can keep running.
We don’t inhabit a culture that praises ignorance. It’s often pointed to as a force behind political extremes and growing societal callousness. And in the age of AI, there’s pressure to have answers for everything—to be fully informed on every topic. But one thing running has shown me is that certainty isn’t just limiting; it can feel like a kind of death. If you’re certain you can’t run, you won’t.
By contrast, admitting “I don’t know” isn’t a failure. It’s a gesture toward a horizon that never fully ends—a distant peak of total knowledge we’ll never reach. It’s a direction we can pursue each day, the faint soundtrack of a Swedish rock band echoing in our ears as we go.
