PERCEPTION

/pəˈsɛpʃ(ə)n/

Effort is a great teacher. If you want to move your point of view, start by moving yourself.

The diamonds apparently streaming from the sky are fairly easy to explain; the rain is simply too heavy for my head torch to penetrate. The light just reflects back in my face, dazzling me, and leaving me to shuffle my way forwards into the maelstrom mostly by feel. The highland cattle on the other hand, which appear to have inflated like so many helium filled balloons, and are now bouncing and rolling across my path, are rather harder to place in what I know of the real world.

I’m on the West Highland Way, approaching Glen Nevis through the Mamores, and I have been moving for 28 hours. Due to some less than ideal planning, I spent my last day before the race on-call at the hospital, so have now been awake for something approaching two days. 

Slowly it dawns on me that my perception may no longer be entirely bound by the “rules” of the physical realm. Nonetheless, I duck slightly as one of my larger bovine companions bounces overhead, and continue down the trail. I have long since been reduced to a slow shuffle, but there is no fear, no frustration, in fact, beyond my immediate experience, my mind is silent. I simply am, and I am moving forward, toward dawn and whatever awaits.

Stories of hallucinations are not uncommon amongst ultra runners and other endurance athletes, and the tales often share territory with the vision quests undertaken by some First Nations and other indigenous people.  These rites of passage, involving combinations of prolonged fasting, physical endurance, sleeplessness and formal ceremony, are undertaken to offer those entering adulthood insights into their true nature, and connection with the purpose of their lives, often accessed by way of symbolic dreams or visions. 

In western society we no longer mark this transition with such challenges, but the value of personal insight and shifting ones perception remains. As does the need for a mechanism to strip away the superficial if we are to access that of true value. 

Effort is my teacher, this I have known for years. Endurance clears my mind and offers clarity in a way for which I have yet to find an alternative. Duration is key, intensity alone is not enough. Combine prolonged effort, sleep deprivation, and uninsulated immersion in the natural world, and you have a powerful abrasive; a well honed tool with which to strip away the accumulated noise and residue of the everyday, and sensitise yourself to base reality, and the quiet voice within.