Weekend with Murakami and The Law of Physics of Life

Ayunda Tafsa Afifa
Nov 2 · 4 min read
Photo by Christopher Rusev on Unsplash

Back in early 2011 when I was still living in Lima — Peru, my love for running was imbued with my love for Murakami. Those who have read the writer’s ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,’ must have known about his perpetual self-discipline in devoting himself to running to keep himself fit. But way beyond his endearment towards all marathon-related, Murakami’s interesting panorama of memories and insights that are jotted down through selections of arousing prose, has somewhat instilled the pleasantly surprising new way for us to look at ‘self-discipline’. That includes the self-discipline to keep questioning one’s choice of life.

As written on The New York Times’ Sunday Book Review:

“Murakami began running seriously when he was 33, in 1982. In 1996 he completed an ultramarathon of 62 miles. Lately, he’s developed a fondness for triathlons, and although he’s fighting a losing battle these days against his own previous (younger) race times, he has no intention of quitting.”

To me, reading the book back then when I was just recently starting my professional career, had somewhat depicted in me the universal language about the topic of self-discipline. If acknowledging Murakami’s record of having gone through 25 marathons while also had written (and) published 11 bestselling novels are not replete with the sense of admiration for one’s self-discipline exemplary, I’ll be gone clueless.


I always knew I wanted to lift people up. My personal choice for going into the social development (field) sector in South America right after college was in essence due to my utmost rational choice to support the purveyor of egalitarian value. Just like what Murakami aptly wrote on What I Talk About When I Talk About Running:

“the most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.”

Searching for meaning, the truth about equality, and figuring lives through the interwoven webs of human stories, there I went to Peru.

In between my work, weekend volunteers, and personal friendship with new people in Lima, I found Murakami’s book at one local bookstore and somewhat was emanated from the powerful old adage of mine. On page 80 of the book, he wrote:

“If you’re young and talented, it’s like you have wings.”

Coming from the perspective of ‘working hard and piling things until you get older and retire happily,’ Murakami had (to a certain extent) asked me to ask my self: Where do you actually want to fly with your wings?

Many times in my life, I let other people’s notions slipped to the back of my mind without hesitation to be aware of it. I declined to choose where to go with my wings because of other (young) people similar direction to headed on to. It’s like constantly getting comfortable living other people’s lives.

At the end of the day, I chose to change my own approach towards life by still (always) working hard, pushing myself self every day while also keep questioning my very own choice. The wetness of every tear that has ever been wept throughout my struggling life in Lima (and other parts of the continent) in the mission of understanding and helping others, must be followed by what I self-acclaimed as: The discovery of my own life’s flow.


“It doesn’t matter how old I get, but as long as I continue to live I’ll always discover something new about myself” — Murakami

It’s funny (and amazing at the same time) how a fiction writer like Murakami constellate the thoughts of life that permeate from the science of physics. Adrian Bejan, writer of The Physics of Life: The Evolution of Everything, guides us through his infamous ‘The Constructal Law’ back in the year of 1996. The Law itself discovered what in the modern world be known as the law of physics of life and evolution:

“Flow systems describe the ways that animals move and migrate, the ways that river deltas form, the ways that people build fires. In each case, they evolve freely to reduce friction and to flow better. To improve themselves and minimize their mistakes or imperfections.”

Photo by Conor Luddy on Unsplash

Recently, whenever people ask me what I think about people who constantly change their perspective, I always succumb to not comment: “What’s wrong with that?” And later on, I always am thankful to me to resist the temptation of sharing what the law of physics says about the flow of life:

“The urge of flowing is not toward an ideal. It is toward something better tomorrow, and do something even better the day after tomorrow — relentless improvement and refinement.”

At the end of the day, without constant battling with our own complex of thoughts, paradigms, and mindset, what we will be having is fixed and ill-defined of one’s path of living.

Borrowing the words of, once again, Murakami: “The only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.”


Ayunda Afifa is a Head of People and Culture at a growing startup based in Bandung, Indonesia (Bobobox). An avid coffee drinker and always in search of good (mind-boggling) books. Her LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/339ATQO

Ayunda Tafsa Afifa

Written by

Head of People and Culture at Bobobox. A truly voracious reader and an avid coffee drinker.

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