Why?

Consciousness. What is it? The feeling of knowing. Knowing what I am, who I am. Full control over the decisions I make. Why I do what I do. What inspires me to take those first steps? Would a horse run for 14 hours just to prove a point? Would it know what it was doing, or remember why it had started that morning by the end of the run that evening?

I stood on the sidewalk today, motionless as the rain fell around me, tapping the new leafs of small trees in front of me. My dog was sniffing in the dirt, then she was pruning the bushes, eating still-attached branches and probably tasting sap. As I watched her I wondered if she knew what she was doing? Was she doing it for a purpose or simply because some unknown force pushed her to start eating bitter branches off tiny trees.

While she did that I looked down at my one free hand (the other was holding the leash). I opened and closed my hand a few times, thinking all the while that I had full control over this process, that I could start and stop at any time, and that more importantly I was the one who initiated the movement. Would a dog stretch out it's left paw and marvel at the movement, ponder the significance of evolution all the while? Why do I have paws, and what creatures came before me that made these paws a necessary evolutionary step in the world.

Humans are considered to be one of the great endurance-based creatures on Earth, one of the few that can run almost endlessly. Some think it is this that has allowed us to thrive on this planet, that we were simply able to outlast our prey in the great game of cat and mouse. Eventually our foes would tire, and we would still be there, pursuing.

Many thoughts have gone through my head since I began the great journey of running and cycling and swimming that now so consumes my life. One primary idea has been the one that says all humans are endurance animals and that a return to that form of lifestyle is deep seeded within us, harkening back to our early days when all we did was hunt and run.

I still wonder if dogs have sentience, the ability to know and understand what they are doing? What I know for sure is that I do, and I choose the life I lead, to punish my body, and praise my body, and keep it nourished, so I can run for 14 hours just to prove a point.