Walking Today So I Can Walk Tomorrow
Just about everyone extols the benefits of walking. I walk. Every morning on the way to work, I walk 13 blocks.
I bought a treadmill and I walk on that too. I thought adding the treadmill would perhaps help me lose weight, but apparently not. I've lost zero zilch nada none.
But I have noticed that the exercise helps me breathe better. I have better capacity. I feel stronger. I learned that all of my blood passes through my lungs (no, I didn't know that before). And so, I figure, it's fairly important that I have real good working lungs and breathing as a base for my blood and my heart.
So, this good feeling of being able to breathe with strength and vigor, without tiring, is a good reason to walk. The cruel thing about exercise is that if you don't keep it up regularly, within about 3 days, everything starts to slide back to what it was before. If you stop for two weeks, it's like completely starting over again! That doesn't seem fair, but, it is what it is.
Now, I walk today so that I will be able to walk tomorrow. I'm too old to want to keep starting over again and again.
This conditioning and unfortunate tendency to atrophy applies to other capacities in life as well. Like kindness. It occurs to me that kindness doesn't just happen because I think I am a nice person. Kindness must be practiced daily, deliberately, as a base for the heart. If it is not, it atrophies too, and it becomes awkward and you have to start again.
I will be kind today so that I will be able to be kind tomorrow. We can't take either breathing or kindness for granted.
Copyright (c) 2006
I bought a treadmill and I walk on that too. I thought adding the treadmill would perhaps help me lose weight, but apparently not. I've lost zero zilch nada none.
But I have noticed that the exercise helps me breathe better. I have better capacity. I feel stronger. I learned that all of my blood passes through my lungs (no, I didn't know that before). And so, I figure, it's fairly important that I have real good working lungs and breathing as a base for my blood and my heart.
So, this good feeling of being able to breathe with strength and vigor, without tiring, is a good reason to walk. The cruel thing about exercise is that if you don't keep it up regularly, within about 3 days, everything starts to slide back to what it was before. If you stop for two weeks, it's like completely starting over again! That doesn't seem fair, but, it is what it is.
Now, I walk today so that I will be able to walk tomorrow. I'm too old to want to keep starting over again and again.
This conditioning and unfortunate tendency to atrophy applies to other capacities in life as well. Like kindness. It occurs to me that kindness doesn't just happen because I think I am a nice person. Kindness must be practiced daily, deliberately, as a base for the heart. If it is not, it atrophies too, and it becomes awkward and you have to start again.
I will be kind today so that I will be able to be kind tomorrow. We can't take either breathing or kindness for granted.
Copyright (c) 2006
I think this idea can be applied to many things in life.
I too am working on practicing kindness on a daily basis. I'm doing it because it helps me remember my 2007 mantra, "Be kind, for everyone is fighting a heard battle."
As for walking or working out of any kind...I did it again to day. I went back to sleep and did not work out this morning.
Thank you for continuing to share your thoughts through your blog. I am going to subscribe to it today because I just love reading your blogs. Your writings help remind me what's important in life and they keep me centered. Thanks.
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Such a good way to look at it. I'm trying to remember this each time I pick up something to eat. It's so very hard to do that, especially around the holidays! My primary motivation right now is to show my kids how to be healthy.
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