What do you do when you get lost in a workout? And in life?

An impenetrable column of crawling trucks shook their heads resignedly when they saw us rushing to get to the exercise session. For three years we have never been late to the training, until then. We had been late for a few minutes before, but we would always be there on time when the team agrees to go to the forest for a training session.
Even though we have reconciled to being late for the session, we thought about what we could do, on our way there. What would we have done if the coach was here with us? The last time we did the uphill race, we did one big lap and fifteen hill sprints which took a little over an hour. If we start now, we might catch up with them soon.

The good thing about this is that the coach is the whole community in fact. If the coach is only one person, he could always backslide. This is why our ancestors used to live in communities and clans, where there was always someone to help out. As life got more convenient, people concluded that both the need for help and community had ceased. It was a fatal flaw for the individual to believe one could do anything alone. What can an individual do without the community? An individual cannot be brought to Earthly life alone. It cannot love or reproduce. It cannot be free.
By the end of the first lap, which passes by the Hajduk’s fountain and continues across the concrete road to the beginning of the uphill, we didn’t see any teammates. Thus, we were alone. We had no choice but to continue by ourselves until the end of the exercise session. It was easier to train together as a community, but its absence should not stop it. The training must not be stopped. And neither should live.

What should we do if we get lost in life? When it is important to prove ourselves to friends who bought goods from a new dealer. When you wait for your drunk friend to take you home when you are drunk. When your wife leaves you one day, and the next day you lose your job. Then the window and the view of the city’s panorama, which you were so proud of, starts to seduce you promising you relief? When you are told that your best friend has cancer and a few more months to live, or when they tell you this for your own child.

Remember what your coach would say. You certainly had one in your life. There is no person without a coach. Perhaps you didn’t have the best coach in life, or perhaps he was too busy paying bills and loans. Or perhaps the others weren’t there either. Maybe he was the bad one. He harassed your mother, and took things out of your house. Forget about it. You survived. You listened to the stories about other coaches. You remembered some coaches. Some of them you even admired as a child. Some of them you despised. Certainly, you had one who instilled benevolence in you. Perhaps that was Saint Sava, or Miloš Obilić. Stevan Sinđelić or Dostoyevsky. Maybe even Pupin or Milanković.

Remember your coach. What would he have said? What words would he have used to teach you and instruct you? Where would he have told you to go and train?

As we have finished the fifteenth hill sprint and have taken the photo, a group of URS sprinters ran above us. This time they were on a longer hill that we hadn’t been on for half a year. I assume this morning’s rainfall has made them go that way. Never mind. We have finished the exercise session with a conversation, which is a tradition here.

In the end, the community does find itself.

Just keep on training.

Mirko Mitrovic, Father Pro

Transliterated by Aleksandra.