My Fitness Diary 3: Due to circumstances beyond our control....

Sometimes clouds can block the sun but it always comes back out eventually...

Well I promised I would share the lows as well as the highs about my fitness journey, and the last few days have been pretty low for me, so here goes:

On Sunday night I started to come down with a really nasty cold, and I even had to take Tuesday off work it was so bad. Now I feel better but I have a bad cough and this has meant no running for 4 days now as physical effort has me choking and gagging :( I feel so frustrated, as I was just starting to get into the zone with running a mile a day and feeling really good about it. Now when I start running again (maybe tomorrow?) I know I will have a struggle to get back to where I was last week.

But really there's no sense in bemoaning things you can't change, is there? And despite my best efforts at hand-washing etc. I did eventually catch the germs that are going around my work at the moment. 

I've been thinking about the causes of our sufferings great and small in life and what the Vedic philosophy says about it. Over the years I've looked into various philosophies and I have found that none address the issue of suffering as completely as the Vedas. Basically, the sources of misery in the material world are threefold: 1: Those pertaining to the body and mind (eg: depression, disabilities etc.) 2: Those imposed on us by other living entities 3: Those inflicted by natural disturbances such as earthquakes, storms etc.

Srimad Bhagavatam  7.13.31:

adhyatmikadibhir duhkhair
avimuktasya karhicit
martyasya krcchropanatair
arthaih kamaih kriyeta kim

Materialistic activities are always mixed with three kinds of miserable conditions . Therefore, even if one achieves some success by performing such activities, what is the benefit of this success? One is still subjected to birth, death, old age, disease and the reactions of his fruitive activities (karma).

Naturally, everyone is trying to free themselves from these forms of suffering- look at the effort made by both societies and individuals to alleviate  their distress. But just as one disease gets eradicated, another  appears... The threefold miseries will never be stamped out, as they are an intrinsic part of the construction of the material world. Only spiritual, rather than material, activities can be free from the three sources of suffering. (And as for why we suffer exactly what we suffer, the Vedas have the answer to this too.)

Now that kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it? I think I'll quit whingeing and go and do something constructive instead...