#1: Vaccine Fever + Type II Fun
Where this all begins: A cool April morning and a 101'F fever.
(Each week, I’ll include some music to listen to whilst you read. This morning, I recommend the new[ish] Wild Pink album, A Billion Little Lights. I’ll link the first track of the record below.)
What would you do if you had a full day without responsibility?
A friend asked this recently, and it took me a while to prioritize the things I enjoy over my list of things I’ve been meaning to do. It’s a tough question to answer, but after a few moments, I had a response: I’d run.
To clarify, I wouldn’t spend the whole day running. I’d get up early to a sunny autumn day and enjoy some coffee and breakfast on my porch (I have a porch in this fantasy). Then I’d lace up and head out for a 3-ish-hour run – slightly longer than what might be comfortable but without a pace or mileage goal in mind. I’d get home, enjoy a shower beer, eat some nachos on the couch, and then bike to a brewery to meet up with some friends.
The day would orbit around the run. It’s hard to articulate why I spend so much time running, especially when others do it so damn well. But, at its core, I like feeling my strength. I also like having an excuse to collapse on the couch afterwards. I often think of running as an escape from capitalism; this labor has no value, and at the end, I’m too tired to consider producing something. I can enjoy my nachos in peace.
I know that lots of people feel this way about endurance sports. In fact, I’d put money on the fact that a lot of people reading this would also choose to spend this dream, responsibility-free day toiling in physical pain. So: What the fuck?
This phenomenon – enjoying something that feels terrible – is called Type II fun. On the “Fun Scale,” Type II fun is something that feels terrible in the moment but which appears enjoyable in retrospect. The term isn’t limited to endurance sports: You can experience Type II fun in an all-night study session with friends, a weekend of lighthearted but heavy drinking, and even in the vortex of a mosh pit. (This is my personal theory as to why there are so many punks in the ultrarunning community, but I digress.)
Most people know what Type II fun feels like. When I posed this question to Instagram, 91 percent of respondents said they’ve had an experience with it. One friend wrote, “Trail work is Type II fun! I was miserable during it, but I look back on it so fondly. And I would do it again in a heartbeat.” Another shared their experience with Bikram-style hot yoga: “They literally tell you to NOT take a water break when it’s 105 degrees with 40% humidity and you’re soaked head to toe in sweat. The SECOND you step outside of the heated room, it’s all worth it for that feeling of release and accomplishment. You can breathe deeper, your mental stamina is stronger, and you can walk on your hands.”
I have no idea where the term came from, but I’m glad it exists; it provides language to help me explain why something so painful can be so enjoyable. I like experiencing pain with the expectation that it will help me grow stronger. It gives meaning to the thousands of hours I’ve spent slamming my body against the pavement.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of pain – how we experience it and prescribe significance. Nietzsche distinguishes sharply between suffering that has meaning and “senseless” suffering. The misery we experience during Type II fun is not an incomprehensible series of random, painful events, but an integral part of the affirmation of the self. I put myself through pain, but that reaffirms both my physical strength and my identity as a “runner,” which is pleasurable in and of itself. And, also, in the words of Kelly Clarkson, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Everybody has done something that was painful and unpleasant in the moment but enjoyable in retrospect. But I think more people have had a Type II fun experience than they realize. In my view, the immune response to the COVID-19 qualifies.
My vaccine experience feels pretty universal: My first dose of Pfizer was fine, but the second was absolute hell. I had my shot at around 5 p.m. on a Monday and woke up at 2 a.m. the next day, sweating and shivering and feeling like every joint in my body had been shoved into a burr grinder. It felt like one of those hangovers where you become conscious but keep your eyes closed for a few more minutes, postponing the moment when you must move your body and feel all the ways in which you’ve hurt yourself.
I’m a person who experiences immune reactions to most vaccines, but there was something different about the COVID jab. It wasn’t just the pain. (My tetanus shot a few years ago left me sore and aching for weeks.) It’s that the pain had meaning; it provided relief. All I had to do was suck it up for a day. Then, I could celebrate.
This is how a lot of people describe their COVID-19 vaccine encounters. Sir Ian McKellen said he felt “euphoric” after his vaccination. Martha Stewart said she felt “proud of and grateful to” everyone involved in her experience. Yo-Yo Ma performed an impromptu solo concert after receiving his second dose.
These experiences follow the classic Type II fun arc. When I got my second dose, I lay on my back for hours staring at the ceiling, the headache too strong to tolerate even my phone screen’s dim glow. When I felt well enough to open my eyes, I watched the event play out on my Garmin watch; my heartbeat spiked to 120bpm when the fever set in but slowed as the day progressed, eventually settling into its normal rhythm about 24 hours after the vaccine. I was exhausted but euphoric as I opened my bag of Smartfood and toggled to the next episode in my Sopranos marathon.
That said, there’s something more complicated about Type II fun than relief that it’s over. It’s nice to have an excuse to take a day off from work or to feel like you’ve accomplished something. But I think we enjoy Type II fun because it allows us to practice “yielding,” a term coined by British philosopher Alan Watts. He explains that resistance to pain exacerbates it, and that accepting pain is central to healing. You recognize pain’s inevitability, its necessity, and allow yourself to feel it fully.
I learned about this term when Haley Nahman expertly applied it to her COVID-19 vaccine experience in her newsletter, Maybe Baby. She writes: “I’d planned to take the day off after my second vaccine. I anticipated the pain for days and even believed it would serve me. None of these things prevented my brief misery, but it did change it. I yielded, lay in my bed for hours, my cat next to me like a tiny body guard. I felt awful and somehow at peace.”
Type II fun, as with the COVID-19 vaccine, is an opportunity to yield. We seek it fully recognizing the inevitability of pain, but we’ve decided the experience is worth the reward. Discomfort is the goal of an ultramarathon; runners talk about their excruciating pain while slumping through mile 30 or 50 or 100 but jump at the opportunity to sign up for the next race. Discomfort is also the goal of a vaccine, whether intentional or not. Vaccines are designed to provoke an immune response, which man manifest as a day spent in bed or a sore arm. I think that both running and the COVID-19 vaccine are examples of the strange gratification we get when we anticipate pain, yield to it, and feel immense relief when it’s over.
My experience with the COVID-19 vaccine has, strangely, recontextualized my relationship with running. In addition to discussing suffering and “unnecessary” suffering, Nietzsche distinguishes between life-affirming and life-negating interpretations of pain. Perhaps Type II fun, whether running for three hours or getting a second Pfizer shot, is our opportunity to experience this life-affirming pain. We let something happen because we know the result will be worth the suffering. Pain is proof of life, and, sometimes, it’s worth the misery.
And now for a strange bit of housekeeping. A couple of weeks ago, my cousin, Michael LeDuc, passed away after a 3-year battle with a rare type of cancer. To honor his memory, members of Michael’s immediate family have started a scholarship fund in his name. Please click here if you would like to donate.