something about mortality

It was a summer of grief. It was only recently that I realised the word to describe it. Actually, it was on reading a novel featuring grief - and when I saw that word, it was like a strange gift, staring out at me. Grief washes at you; it is a great tsunami and you choke, maybe almost die; but when it recedes, you realise it has left you with something, all those shells on the shore... And suddenly, all of the pettiness that piles up over the years has nothing on you; you are changed forever. You continue to mourn, but this mourning saves you from the more hollow pits, and as you stare into those voids (like of people trying to frustrate the growth of your life), you are left with gratitude. And grief. At the same time. But mostly gratitude for being given the chance to live through death.
Looking back, the dying during life was the hardest; when you are watching someone dying but don't quite realise it. I was also dying in my own way. So much nervousness, fear. Periods of not being able to communicate (when I have never had a problem with that before). Last weekend, it finally dawned on me that I needed to find my peace; this weekend, I began to find it: a "coming to terms".
It is strange how death 'finds you', reminiscent of that line in Rilke's "Archaic Torso": "for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life." 
My life choices have left me scraping by in a university job in an immediate professional environment where I have not felt valued, and definitely underpaid for the conscientious approach I take. I have no money to even go on vacation. But I can run. I run 50-60 miles per week, on average. And the last two runs have been such that I was able to fully gain strength from them: the beauty of the autumn trails, what more could one ask for in life? There was no lack.

But this very morning I was stopped by a woman who asked: I see you here often, running by; what's all of that for?! Health, I said. And are you healthy, she asked? I gave her a thumbs up, and ran on, momentarily cursing her for that look in her eyes when she asked the second question, and thinking, you in your fancy clothes clearly know nothing of Socrates and even less of that platitude, in mens sana in corpore sano; you are an example of what my doctor friend with a world-recognised patent explains as the kind of person unable to draw peace and strength from nature, so sad... Then I stopped, all of those interruptions to what I am doing with my life are just so much noise that can be tuned out - like tuning out a noisy fridge when trying to sleep at night.
I feel embarrassed by writing these things. They are personal like so much wash hanging out to dry. But I've been thinking recently about how necessary it is to bring the corporeal to communication; how quickly communication becomes a cloud of specious sophistry unless it is seen in concrete ends (some kind of telos), beginning from where we are (in our telo, or тѣло; body).
Subjects I have considered recently in these musings include the EU directive on plurilingualism (what I have to say about this as a lecturer - can we not talk about intellectual aptitudes/readiness related to higher proficiency?); how quick people are to enter 'political' debate without consideration of the problems of politics (without having read, at the very least, Aristotle: politics comes after consideration of virtue, morals, the potential for corruption of self); how little is understood about civics - so, people in cities walk their dogs on long leashes and lash out at people who trip over them; drive illegal buggies wherever they want; push past neighbours in buildings; etc. In other words: how can we, with wisdom, live together? Do we even know how to live with ourselves?
There can be phases of flailing. Are we able to find compassion for this? To find love for ourselves in our fallibility, our mortality. To know when to laugh it away. I've been a slow learner in this, but I intellectually understand that not every question is deserving of a serious answer. But sometimes, the gravest of the grave cedes life.