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So you're running. Into the wind. On New York City's east side. In the pouring rain. Well after sunset.
Why you decided to go for a run on a wintry night in the ceaseless rain and a whipping widowy wind you cant remember now. Your shoes fill with icy rainwater as you pad through street puddles and the rain collects like ice cubes in the heels of your shoes. The wind blows your hood around behind you until it quickly grows heavy with rainwater. Theres no one on the street, no boats on the east river, only silhouettes in their cars racing the weather toward home. A muddy construction cone drowns in the middle of the sidewalk. You are 2 miles from your apartment with only black puddles in between. The river stalks you alongside the path, angry and irritated into dirty black peaks by the heavy rain and wind. The streetlights thin as the path pulls away from Alphabet city and dips underneath the skeletal unberbelly of the Williamsburg bridge. The park gates are chained. The public restrooms padlocked. The skyline blotted out. The street-size path flooded from side to side. The FDR highway throwing sheets of water over the fence on the path as speeding cars hit puddles in the road. And thats the only sound you can hear against the beating of the rain.
You've worn multiple layers. Water-resistent, weather-friendly, non-cotton polar layers made out of material that apparently costs $50 a yard. Every layer is backed up by another layer underneath it until you feel like a big rubber chewtoy instead of a night jogger. But tonight, the rain is too much for your careful wardrobe weatherproofing. Within 10 minutes every last layer is soaked to the skin - and that special-non cotton material retaining icy cold water like the titanic. Everything sags - wet, heavy and freezing -- all over your body, held damp against your warmest crevaces. When a solitary streetlight casts your long shadow in a puddle as you pass, you can see the steam that is rising from the back of your neck in the reflection. It rains harder. Harder until the driving water is pouncing with a splash off your chest and into your eyes. You run faster.
Somewhere near the third mile, you notice that the hot pumping of your muscles is creating a paper-thin envelope of warmth around you. This is how you are moving through the universe. How you are navigating the weather of your life. The freezing, hypothermic rain of failure and doubt completely surrounding you in spandex layers, stretched close accross your pounding heart, just waiting to get an icy bite into your bones. And you realize that its only you thats keeping you warm. The raw friction of your body burning toward a full-out sprint and laboring for oxygen thats keeping you from shivering. Your expensive layers that made you feel good enough about going out into a rainy night were never any help at all to keep it out. And once you realize this, there is only one thing to do. Just dont stop running.