Skip to main content

31 Days: Walk




Walking is my favorite form of exercise. It is also my favorite way of seeing a place. When I went to Europe three years ago, my sister and I walked everywhere through London, Paris, Florence, Venice, and Rome. With the exception of subway rides, bus tours, and a magical trip through the canals of Venice, we saw the sights on our feet.

I love the line of Wild when Cheryl Strayed says, "I'm going to walk back to the woman my mother thought I was." Walking is healing. I am fascinated by those life-changing walks, like Pacific Crest Trail or Camino del Santiago in Spain. Someone I go to church with made this walk and told my book club all about her adventure. I went home and bought several books off of Amazon about it, adding it to my bucket list of things I want to do.

Walking is motion. It is moving from where you are to where you want to be. You can observe as you go, taking in the scenery along the way. Or you can stare at the ground concentrating on where you are going. The one thing you never see is people walking backwards or looking behind them as they walk.

I love this notion of walking, of moving. Someone may have walked out on me but that doesn't mean my life stopped. I can see his walking out as something that happened for me, not to me. I can hold my head up, taking in the scenery of everything around and the people who are still there, as I walk into the life that is waiting for me.

Walking is motion. And when life hands you something you don't want, motion is the only way out of that place. Walking can bring you back to who you want to be or it can take you to the person you never dreamed you could be. It is all in the motion.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Five Minute Friday: Roots

Lisa-Jo Baker (lisajobaker.com) hosts a weekly event on her blog called "Five Minute Friday". The rules are 1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking. 2. Link back here and invite others to join in. 3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community.. So here's my first try at this. Today's topic was Roots. Roots – I think about my grandparents who lived on a farm until my grandfather’s diabetes worsened and they moved to a town with a hospital nearby. My father still says he wished he could have kept that farm. I think of my grandmother who was a widow for 20 years. Every year she would stand over my PaPa’s grave, wishing she was with him. I think of my parents, a product of those grandparents, how hard my father worked to put 2 girls through
10 comments
Read more

Five Minute Friday: Time

Five Minute Friday is a writing event that has writers spending five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing them at http://katemotaung.com/five-minute-friday/ . This week's word is Time. Sometimes time feels like this, like we are in it. Standing inside it, watching life pass by. It is so easy to get stuck in a time - in our pain, in our hurt. We hear the ache tick away in our head like a giant clock. Time, instead, is a gift. More time with family, more time to accomplish goals, more time to see the world. When you are hurting, it seems like time takes forever. One day turns into another day, turns into another day. When we hate a job, the five days of time that make up a work week seem to go on forever. But those five days are also a gift. Because these days, a job is not a guarantee. I want to see time as gift, not as a chore. I want to be on the other side of it, wishing there was more of it. Making the most of every hour, minute, and second instead of
6 comments
Read more

Five Minute Friday: Dwell

Five Minute Friday is a writing event that has writers spending five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing them at http://katemotaung.com/five-minute-friday/ . This week's word is Dwell. I have thought about this word a lot - where should I dwell. After my divorce, I had a big decision to make - did I buy X's half of the house and continue to dwell where I had for the past 15 years or did I sell and move to a new dwelling. After crunching numbers and weighing my options, I decide to stay in the house we had bought together. Because, when it came right down to it, I loved my house. I felt safe there. I try not to dwell on the sadness that happened in this place but instead try to dwell on making it my own. I have painted rooms in colors X would have never agreed upon, I have bought artwork that he would never have hung. I want to dwell in a place that reflects who I am. When the yard is full of weeds and the basement full of water, I long to dwell in
6 comments
Read more