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.
