Man Can’t Decide Whether to Go For Run or Give Up Running Altogether and Embrace Inevitable Slide Into Decay and Decline
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istockphoto.com
A local runner struggled yesterday to choose between heading out for a short run or just completely giving up on everything because “what’s the point, anyway,” Dumb Runner has learned.
John Matuszak, 36, was home on his couch during the deliberations, the culmination of a day’s worth of procrastination. He had planned to run earlier in the day, before work, sources said, but slept through his alarm. Later he considered heading to the gym on his lunch hour, but wound up going to Chipotle with coworkers.
Arriving home around 6:10 p.m., Matuszak was determined to make it out for a few easy miles. Before changing into his running gear, however, he decided to have a small snack.
Forty minutes later, he was still snacking—and grappling with existential doubts.
“I still have time for three or four miles,” Matuszak is reported to have thought. “Or maybe I should just give myself permission to take a zero and stop worrying about it. I mean, honestly, what difference does it make?”
From there, sources said, Matuszak plunged the depths of his soul as he explored the very nature of life and death and pondered whether his existence, in the end, is essentially meaningless.
In a way, Matuszak told himself, the brave choice would be in deciding not to run, in not just accepting but embracing the inevitable decline of body and mind. There would be a certain sense of empowerment, he told himself, in looking his body’s inevitable, incremental degradation in the eye and accepting it.
Or, he asked himself, was that a cop-out?
“On one hand,” Matuszak thought, “I always feel better after a run. Like, always.”
“On the other, I only have three days left on this free trial of Disney+ and I haven’t even watched the first episode of The Mandalorian yet.”
After checking the time once more, he sighed.
At last report, Matuszak had returned to his kitchen to reheat some leftover pizza.
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