We're Americans, and so BOTH nature AND nurture teach us to DESIRE, to WANT, to STRIVE TYPE A TRIPLE A for stuff, status, a GLUT. I like to say I read Henry David Thoreau at an impressionable age (17), and reading Walden definitely tempered my Stuff Lust, but it didn't kill it. So many pretty pictures and other influences fought back hard -- and those predominant influences are ONGOING, nearly constant, unlike a lovely though dusty work of mid-19th century transcendentalism.

It's like yoga. Millions practice yoga in classes they pay for with GEAR they collect, apart from their other possessions. And cycling: different sets of clothes for mountain biking and road biking. There may never be an end to this sort of consumerism. A lot of ambitious and eager people are paid a lot of money to get other people to buy, Buy, BUY.

What simple message can I offer? Simpler is often healthier, so if you really love yourself and your neighbors, then simplicity will follow. Simplicity follows love more than it follows fads or style.

I ran my first marathon (in Chicago) the same day Oprah ran her one and only marathon with the Marines. And she is the person credited with saying, "if you can run a marathon, you can do anything."

Of course, that is not true. Most things in life are more challenging than running a marathon, things like love and diplomacy and peace and sustaining marriage.

Running a marathon is one of the simplest things a person can do, especially if you count five and six hour finishes as "running" a marathon. Not that I am an elitist. I am not an elitist, and neither should running be. And as for the massive middle of the pack in races these days, well, goals are good. We need the informal jogs and the lone runs and the team training, and we need the races, too, with clocks and ribbons and spectators. (THANK YOU, SPECTATORS!)

In this generally slothful nation, where more people follow the leaders in sports from their snack-stained couches and hazy, neon-lit sports bars, we should be overjoyed that such a simple, accessible and affordable sport has grown as it has. Running is basic to human evolution and physiology. Running -- and especially long distance running, keeping it going for more than a few miles -- is part of what defines and distinguishes us as humans.

It's up to the leaders and the "elite" to run as fast and as far as they can or want. It is up to the rest of us to get outside, to get moving, to get our hearts beating, to build strength and stamina -- and to find joy. We are not stumbling in the pursuit of the elite; we are actively participating in the pursuit of happiness and of feeling not only awake and alive but vibrant. Vive le feet!