Gratitude Monday: mid-day wisdom

When I’m home, I try to take my walks in the morning, because summer. I mean—I like to get out before the midges and mosquitos are up for the day, and before the temperatures and humidity hit the 90s, because once they’re up there, they’ don’t go down until tomorrow morning.

But the other day, I’d had my walk, sat through a conference call, had the flooring contractor walk through to assess the water damage (and discover that flooring contractors don’t do anything to remediate the mold under the floor; that’s Someone Else, “with a fan”), spent a couple of hours wrestling spreadsheets and joined a weekly Twitter careers chat. And I just decided to go out again.

I needed new runners, because the ones I bought two years ago have worn through to the plastic core at the Achilles tendon area. I do not fancy developing bone spurs. And there’s a poncy running shop over to the faux urban center in the People’s Republic about half a mile away.

So around 1300 I suited up and headed out.

As I was turning onto the W&OD Trail, I passed an old fellow who—from the looks of his tan—spends a good amount of time in the sun. I smiled, nodded and said, “Good morning,” because I’m accustomed to being out and about before noon. Then I caught myself and amended it, “I mean afternoon.”

And his reply has kept me wondering all weekend. In a not terribly noticeable Slavic accent he brushed my correction aside with his hand and said, “You are a happy one. Russian wisdom says that the ones who are happy are not bothered by time.”

Well, I have never numbered myself among those who have the gift of happiness. (When I was taking part in a drug trial in the last century and being asked every week by one of the principal investigators “Where are you on a scale of one to ten with ten being extremely happy?”, my answer never rose above a four. One day he put down his Cross pen and asked, “On your best day ever, what were you?” After careful consideration, I replied, “A seven.” In the years since, there has been once—well, maybe three times—when I hit a nine, but my life is generally a grey sludge and the advent of our current political situation has driven me back below the five mark.) Plus, it was friggin’ hot and I’d already started to sweat and I still had almost the full half-mile to go. But Russian wisdom guy thought I was “one of the happy ones.”

Huh.

I pondered this all the way to the poncy running shop, where they had no Mizunos in subtle colors. (In fairness: Mizuno doesn’t really do subtle.) As I stared at the electric blue pair, I pondered whether to have them order in a pair of trainers in grey with aqua accents (or whether to go online and see if I could find them for $5 less than in the shop). Then I though about Russian wisdom and said, “Maybe it’s time for me to bust out.”

So I bought them and walked home, reveling in how nice it is to have shoes that provide some cushioning again.

I’m still thinking about Russian wisdom. I’m not convinced that he parsed me correctly, but I’m willing to play with the notion. And I’m grateful that I chose to go out at that precise time, so I could have that prompt from the universe.