Several years ago I was walking to the school ground with my then four-year old daughter. Jessie skipped happily along beside me, bouncing and bobbing, running back and forth from my side to the corner and back.
She ran up to one neighbors door step to pet their cat, across another neighbors lawn to roll through their lush green grass, leaping up and rushing back to my side. She twirled and danced as only four-year olds can.
She probably covered five times the amount of ground that I had covered in the same time.
As she approached the corner where she knew she had to wait to hold my hand to cross, she did a few more bounds and leaps on the spot, then sprinted back for one final trip across the sidewalk, reaching up and gripping my hand with her grubby little paw.
“Mummy, how come I don’t have to go to the gym and work out like you do?” She blurted. I realized right then that she actually knew the reason why, but her four-year old logic was unable to articulate the thought.
She knew that if only I would run and bob, dip and dance my way to pick my son up for lunch, that I would be able to spend considerably less time at the gym.
We tell ourselves to park a little further from the store, to take the stairs instead of the elevator and to ride our bikes to the grocery store whenever possible. And we mostly take those little steps successfully, but what if we all were just more exuberant?
What if instead of walking carefully up a flight of stairs, we darted up the flight two at a time, or bounding down flying through the air to the imaginary finish line? At what age do we stop skipping and begin ambling? Wouldn’t it be fun to leap on a friend’s back in greeting? And honestly, when was the last time you lay down at the top of a hill and rolled all the way down, only to run back up the steep slope and do it all over again, ten or twelve times? And the best part is that it’s all done for absolutely no reason whatsoever, with neither time line nor schedule.
I suppose we don’t do all those things because people would think our cheese had slipped all the way off our cracker, but honestly, wouldn’t it be fun?
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Happy Lifting!
