How to Have a Passionate Life

Opinion|Why We Do Unpleasant Things

Haruki Murakami was a mediocre student. Like a lot of people who go on to high achievement later in life, the future novelist had trouble paying attention to what the teachers told him to pay attention to, and could only study what he was interested in. But he made it to college, and a few credits before graduating he opened a small jazz club in Tokyo. After a ton of hard work, he was able to pay the bills, hire a staff and keep the place open.

In 1978, Murakami was at Meiji Jingu Stadium in Japan watching a baseball game and drinking a beer. The leadoff batter for his team, the Yakult Swallows, laced the ball down the left field line. As the batter pulled into second base, a thought crossed through Murakami’s head: “You know what? I could try writing a novel.”

He started writing after closing time at his jazz club and eventually sent a manuscript off to a literary magazine — so blasé about it that he didn’t even make a copy for himself in case the magazine lost what he had sent in. It won a prize and was published the next summer. He decided to sell the bar, which was his only reliable source of income, and pursue writing. “I’m the kind of person who has to totally commit to whatever I do,” he wrote in his 2008 memoir.

No longer doing the physically demanding work of running a bar, he started to put on weight. He decided to take up a sport, and running seemed like a good option: There was a track right by his house, it didn’t require fancy equipment and he could do it by himself.

He wasn’t lying when he talked about his tendency toward total commitment. By the late 2000s, he was running six miles a day, six days a week every week of the year, and had run in 23 marathons, plus many other long-distance races, an ultramarathon and some triathlons.

Even when he was young his times were not stellar, and he was miserable a lot of the time. The memoir, “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” is studded with sentences in which he describes his agony at one race after another: “As I ran this race, I felt I never, ever wanted to go through that again.” Or: “At around 23 miles I start to hate everything.” Or: “I finally reach the end. Strangely, I have no feeling of accomplishment. The only thing I feel is utter relief that I don’t have to run anymore.” Or: “It was draining physically, as you can imagine, and for a while afterward I swore I’d never run again.”