Is collecting experiences a bad thing?

[Dstew]

Posted this in my journal but thought it could be here for a general discussion. From an ultra marathoner blog I stumbled upon:

I have a tendency to overthink things, and by that I mean I tend to think about the things I do so much that they start to seem sort of stupid. Running a long way doesn’t seem to have much of a point if the point you’re looking for is something tangible. Races are a nice way to quantify running, but they are few and far between. So I need another reason to do it, and the outdoor world is quick to provide reasons to get outside. A simple perusal of advertisements shows the soulful bounty of being in, near, and among such things as alpenglow, campfires in the wilderness, lunchtime in a canyon, reading by an alpine lake, and/or looking upward while climbing a peak. There is more, it’s endless, and you know what I’m talking about. In the culture of outdoor sports, we all believe there is an inherent value in simple outdoor experience that is not simply intangible by coincidence–it is valuable precisely because it is intangible. It’s a reaction to a general sense of overmaterialism in western culture. This is what I mean when I say I overthink things.

I believe that valuing intangible experience in this way is right and good. I also believe that a lot of us take it too far by substituting an idea of “experiences” for clothes or cars or any of the other normal materialistic things. We collect experiences like money, using each experience, each photo, each video to attach to our lives a quantifiable value. That defeats the purpose of doing something intangible simply for the sake of its intangibility, but I think we can be forgiven. The concept of purity is unrealistic and we could be doing a lot worse than recording ourselves.

In my case, running marathons was no longer fun and it was harmful and damaging to me. But as far as experiences went, it was the sports car convertible or trophy wife of experiences and one actually got a trophy in the form of a finisher medal. But I HAD to collect more such experiences and fill the empty spots in my shadow box collection of finisher medals. So in my case it was a very bad thing and thus it was right and easy for me to finally see the light and start to do activities more suited to me. I am addicted to "events" and still will collect them but with the caveat and condition that I have fun preparing and doing the event and it is done in a healthy way. That I will attempt to put the intangible benefits first where I can.

Or is the author and I wrong and there is nothing wrong with using races to quantify one's life?

[Mark.AU]

You and the author are wrong. Using the word "wrong" is why you are wrong.

There is never anything wrong in any one person's approach to how they pursue their hobby or passion, be it running, needlework, scale model making or flower arranging.

Any attempt by an observer to make a judgement on the value, purpose or worth of another's manner or method of pursuit of their happiness is as worthless as that judgement.

You might well have an opinion though.

[Dstew]

You and the author are wrong. Using the word "wrong" is why you are wrong.

There is never anything wrong in any one person's approach to how they pursue their hobby or passion, be it running, needlework, scale model making or flower arranging.

Any attempt by an observer to make a judgement on the value, purpose or worth of another's manner or method of pursuit of their happiness is as worthless as that judgement.

You might well have an opinion though.

I was not clear in that my opinion was that given a tendency to be addictive and to follow the demands of ego and vanity, it is now wrong for ME. Trying to qualify for the Boston marathon or get on the podium, this sort of collecting was good for me. But with the normal aging process combined with my accumulated damage from running and specifically from long distance running, a very, very, very bad and wrong thing, for ME.

If does not adversely impact one's health or fitness and it is fun, then I see nothing wrong with it per say. Although part of the point may be that instead of recording every workout, every race and "collecting" these experiences, would one not be better served by just doing the exercise?

Today I had to go downtown to pick up something so I took the train down and ran back home. Had my Garmin and was just about ready to press "record" when I decided not to do that. I had no idea about time, distance or pace. I really, really enjoyed it. For the first time in a very long time, I actually was running. Pick your heels, full stride not worried about going too fast or running out of gas. I missed that and I wonder how much my other workouts have been adversely impacted by collecting? Having said that, I finally broke down and used a GPS app to find out I had run 14 K. This is off topic or is it in that part of the reason I started to run was that in my mind, I thought I was doing a total of 4 - 5 k from where I made a pit stop to grab a coffee and a bagel. As it turns out, I had correctly guessed that I had done 7 K up to that point. But when I looked on the GPS, it was actually 7 K. I was listening to my body and not some device and so struggling with the wonder, curiosity of what I have done against the bliss of ignorance.

I have to also wonder that our society, our culture has lead us to a point where if it is not recorded, did we actually do what we did? In my case, the most fun I had and the fastest I was in an injury free manner was a kitchen clock and a bike path map on paper. Never recorded a single one of these runs. It was more a quick debrief and that run was quickly and permanently forgotten. It was more about a general feel - I would look at the kitchen clock as I left the house, glanced at it when I came back and had a rough idea what it did or should take me to run what I did. But I also knew and appreciated that certain days were better and certain days were worse and it really did not have to do with my approach. But as there was no journal, no public record, there was no undue influence from the "judging" eyes of the anonymous mob that could not really care less what was pace was. But for some odd reason, it mattered to me. So this was really more about what is right or wrong for me and maybe just curious as to how others see this.