How do you go about living life? Do you look at life as being a race, or do you look at life as being run? Depending on the way you view life can tell you about the person you are. In “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” by Alan Sillitoe gives an inside look of the two perspectives from the point of view of a teenage boy named Smith. There are many differences between looking at the image of life as a run and looking at the image of life as a race. Looking and comparing life to a run as to a race would be as if you went about life in a more calm and relaxed way. Therefore, this may tell you that if you look at life as a run you are a calmer person and take on life from a day to day basis. Going for a run would be equivalent to looking at life as a journey, the destination or finish line not being the end goal, but the events from the beginning to the end is what matters. For this reason, you absorb and take in everything going on around you and you think about how these events and moments affect you in your life. On page 1207 of “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” Smith says, “And this long-distance running lark is the best of all, because it makes me think so good that I learn things even better than when I'm on my bed at night." At this point he is on a run, not in a race, he has the time to think about what is going on in his …show more content…
Living life as a run expresses the importance of the journey and the little things, whereas viewing the image of life as a race expresses the importance of the end result more than the events that got you there. The difference between personalities, where people who would look at life as a run would be calm and relaxed versus someone who views it as a race would be uptight and competitive. There are different ways to go about viewing life. Whether you want to look at it as a race or as a run, that's up to