I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For....

As Forest Gump once said, I have worn many shoes. I have driven delivery trucks and motorcycles, been a deck hand on a sportfishing boat, a roofer, a printer, worked on the pit crew for a Top Fuel dragster, an auto mechanic and worked auto parts counters, a student, a research astrophysicist, a writer, a director/manager, an executive, an equestrian, a cyclist, and a runner. 

Through all that, the one constant has been that I am a runner. I have been a fast runner, a slow runner, a walker, a short distance runner, an injured runner, a long-distance runner, and an ultra-distance runner. I have succeeded. I have failed more often than not. I have cried. I have bled. I have been close to death in the desert. I have leapt over hurdles, high jumps, and long jumps. I have raced with greats and not so greats. I have made dreams come true. I have witnessed true greatness and dreamed more. Through heroic efforts I remain a runner in spite of a debilitating back injury nearly 20 years ago.

I have been told that this experience I have accumulated has made me wise. 

If “wise” means that I know the truth, then I am certainly not wise. I have searched for meaning since I was 16 years old. I have searched for who I am. I have searched for what I will be. Mostly, I have searched for what it is all about (it is not the Hokey Pokey, this much I do know). I have always searched for whatever it is I am searching for. 

As I am now old enough to be looking head on into the long darkness, it pains me to find that I still do not know anything. Not really. I have used logic, philosophy, research, science, meta-physics, music, literature, meditation, psychotropic medications, anything my extensive experience and knowledge have brought me.

It scares me that I will still be searching at the moment of my last breath.

After all these years, I still have not found what I’m looking for.

This is why I am still a runner. It is harder. I am slower. But I have to keep doing it. The answer is out there, somewhere. I must find it.

Onward.

"Badwater" Bill

Arnold, MD