You run so you can finish the marathon, yes — but also to stay in shape, and because it puts you in touch with your body and with your environment…and because running alone and listening to yourself breathe is a weirdly spiritual thing to do.

I have around 400 Facebook friends. I’ve “dated” (loosely defined) just over 3 percent of them, by my calculation. Facebook is just a way of keeping in touch; I certainly don’t see it as a lurking threat to my marriage. Grown-ups know that “you can’t go home again,” to borrow a phrase from Thomas Wolfe…or, at least, that “you can’t go out again.”

Recently, I had a chance to spend some time in the place where I grew up, Oak Park, Michigan. I was visiting my mom with my wife and sons and we swung by a park that I used to love as a boy. It’s called Shepherd Park, behind the rec center and the baseball diamond, [...]