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# Hope, Or on the Vulnerable Optimism of Runners
- URL: https://www.readunderpinnings.com/hope-or-on-the-vulnerable-optimism-of-runners/
- Published: 2026-09-04T03:22:46.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-17T11:51:52.000Z
- Description: Vulnerability always makes me think of that W. H. Auden poem, where he writes “let the more loving one be me.” I know that poem is likely talking about another human, but I often think it could equally be written from the perspective of a runner thinking about the act of running.
- Author: Sarah Austin Casson
- Tags: In Motion

Vulnerability always makes me think of that W. H. Auden poem, where he writes “let the more loving one be me.” I know that poem is likely talking about another human, but I often think it could equally be written from the perspective of a runner thinking about the act of running.

It’s a deeply vulnerable act to love and to be brave enough to love. It’s what we ideally do in our lives and what we’re doing every time we get out the door for a run. Doing so is an act of hope. It’s an assumption that a run will happen. That the beauty and chaos of a run (and a life) will happen. That we’ll get this one and the next and the next.

Hope is a verb, as so many like to say. That's what a run is every single day, right? You're coming for hope and must bring your vulnerability. As you leave the door, you're hoping that the run will happen. 

I think runners tend to be a pretty optimistic bunch. We believe that a run will make us feel better, that this run will be better than the last one. That we’ll get faster, stronger, be able to run longer, that that injury won't come back, that we’ll always get PRs, that of course we’ll be able to send that workout.

Doing so requires a belief that something good is coming, despite the knowledge that we are always decaying, aging, changing, in a world of chaos, that no run matters and yet that’s all we have, the run that we’re in, so to say.

Recently I dislocated a small bone in my foot. How? I have absolutely no idea. When the pain started shooting and radiating around my foot, I figured it was a ligament thing or a stress fracture. Both those answers made me panic. Injuries, in general, tend to make me panic. I used to get injured pretty frequently but now have had a good stretch of years and years without injury.

I don't intend to panic (who intends to panic?) when those injury whispers start to show up. I feel vulnerable in all the worst ways. Exposed. Dumb. Unfit. Unable. I both want to run harder and to prove I'm not weak and simultaneously lie on the couch for the next four months to ensure I've properly rested. Meaning, I go to extremes, immediately.

The idea of going for a slow jog to test out how things are feeling is reasonable and smart and absolutely not what I want to do in those moments. That's because it's the most vulnerable, hopeful option. That slow jog will tell you that you're an imperfect human who needs to keep finding the balance of pushing and relaxing. That yes, you might have seriously hurt your foot and must face that — or it might be fine and a little tender, and you must see that too. That your foot, like you, is tender and vulnerable and needs caring. It needs an ever-changing ratio of activity and rest. Of attention and not obsession.

You must care too much, in a good way, to be a runner. It's part of the deal. In the relationship to running, you are the one who must be more loving. As Auden begins his poem, “Looking up at the stars, I know quite well / That, for all they care, I can go to hell” — Running cannot, will not, love you back.

Being a runner requires being an earnest try-hard in the best possible way. You must care. Sometimes that feels awful, especially as you’re contemplating a slow jog to test out if your foot is fine or if you’ve hurt it forever, which of course is not forever or that dramatic. But don’t tell that to a runner.