Unplugged

March 9, 2026

Greetings from the instrument,

The rain splashed around me, buffeted by a spring-like wind that couldn’t make up its mind whether to be spiteful or playful.  March in Michigan is the time of year when running outside for a couple of hours can bring experiences that range from frostbite to heat exhaustion.

Even with the patter of the rain, the sighs and rushes of wind, I could hear my breathing, and the soft clap of my feet on the wet pavement. I had been running long enough that I stopped thinking about running, about pace or effort or time.

This is a unique space.  It is where I begin to know differently, where I am introduced more emphatically to my surroundings.  I am disconnected from most other potential distractions. Whatever lists I left behind on my desk, or the recycling that needs to be taken to the curb, or the email that I meant to reply to three days ago.

The immediate world is my environment; it slowly becomes what I am most concerned with.  I look at the white line on the pavement, parading past mailboxes, ragged edges of driveways.  The ditch filled with rushing rainwater, the knot of geese slicing through the rain beneath the stonewashed-denim clouds.

This reality is played all around me, and it fills up my senses, and in some ways I am being played by it. My world is performing my senses.  It is an idea that has flickered in me before, but for the first time I am living it instead of thinking it.  The rain on my skin, the sound of the wind, the smell of the wet soil and the rotting things from last fall, the marbled sky.  And almost in the background, my body is working, legs and arms and lungs and heart.

For a mile or so I am swept up in this.  Time gets away from me, not only in the amount that passes but how it passes. I reached a corner of two muddy roads, paused for a moment, and accept the ache in the muscles, the dampness of my rain soaked shirt, the grit on my skin, and the feel of this reality holding me, seeping into me.  Restoring me.

Somewhere in the past, and probably the future, life plays wars and chaos and indifference and anger and righteousness.  I’m aware of what goes on in the world, and also that a lot of it is funneled intentionally at me to change me.  That awareness is not always enough of a defense.

Most of the time I run long enough to separate myself from the noise. I realized that I have been dosing myself with this relief for most of my life.  I also realized that this habit, this lifestyle, might be saving me from what conspires to grind me into something smaller.  Out in this wet, inconvenient world, where I am not separated from nature, not separated from myself, there are no memes, no algorithms, no disruption.  I am not being poisoned by a toxin that is sent to me every minute and that I somehow accept as normal.  That is left behind.

There has never not been wars and chaos and indifference and anger and righteousness.  Not in the years I’ve been alive, and, maybe never since Eden.  But there is a difference now. There is only a thin separation between us and the chaos, and we erode it further every time we look at another screen that lets it in.  Now we are not just taking in the news, the problems, the choices.  This world is playing us, on purpose.  It is playing our fears, our anger, our cynicism.  It is breaking our hearts on purpose.

If we are not intentional about how we respond to this, it will change us, maybe permanently.

I ran in the rain just long enough to be grateful I can run in the rain.  I reached a place where the thoughts came that I created, that I chose.  I found the relief in my own struggle to run, to be better.  The run took effort, brought fatigue, and in the same moment made me stronger. When I finally stopped at the end of my driveway, I felt my balance restored, the voids in my spirit filled in, healed.

I run for many reasons, it is part of my purpose. It’s not running away, it’s not shirking my duty as responsible adult, it’s not ignoring the plight of the world.  I run to care for my physical self, and to release the knots in my soul, and to seek the beauty that is also the world. 

We were not created for just one thing, but threaded through everything we are intended for is happiness.  We were made to take on the challenges of this life with hope and the strength to live out that optimism.  It is up to us to find ways to build that strength and protect it and refresh it so we can be the best humans possible.

We are the instruments, and we decide how we will be played.

Hope this finds you choosing,

David

Copyright © 2026 David Smith