Restless from the long car ride, my legs ache for an invigorating walk.
So I slip on a red coat, pop on a dusty gold beret, and pull well-worn boots (the closest foot apparel I have to weather appropriate strolling shoes).
I briskly welcome the cold, sunlit air and find myself on a path that circles around ponds, winter-roosting geese (Kentucky is their idea of a southern winter), and backyard playsets where coat-bundled children climb monkey bars. Huddled in a tight circle near the slide, the ring leader starts and restarts a story about his babysitter…no it was his sister, actually it was his mother…and his story fades to the whistling wind as I walk forward, brightly smiling at a tug of the old and familiar times of my own storytelling games with children at an improv theater. The memories of then leap into the now and there’s a splash of buoyant warmth around my heart.
Quickly my pace overtakes a sniffing investigative dog and her patient owner.
I attempt to slow. I even contemplate cutting through a backyard and onto the street to avoid the awkwardness of matching the pace with another stroller.
I do this.
I am a fast walker.
I’ve been praised and reprimanded for my speedy steps, my quick pace.
I relish airports because I can freely walk at my own tempo, and I fancy people think I’m racing to catch a plane but truthfully, I’m just enjoying the pace of my own unique, high-spirited stride.
And when I am walking at my own pace, I radiate aliveness, and that joy of aliveness recycles and refreshes energy to stream through my whole embodied being.
Yes, I secretly rejoice to have layovers at airports because I can traverse the terminals at my own pace, and here on this trail home to geese and backyard swings, I experience the same joy-lit tilt to my step.
And then I have moments like now when I painfully notice that my stride doesn’t match the ones of other walkers on the course, and I feel the old tinge of inner judgment that my way of being, my way of moving through the world is weird. And that particular judgment has been internalized from people who were too close to me when I was young, from people who are wounded and wound.
It’s curious to witness how judgment seeps into the subtle and significant – like walking at my own pace, but even I’ve held reservations about my energetic movements, because the common thought is that slower means more mindfully, but that’s not always the case for me.
Sometimes excited and expressive movements shine my spirit more authentically.
And here, on an Instagram stroll, a quote by former monk and mindfulness teacher, Cory Muscara sends a wink of encouragement about my excited, bouncy steps. And here I paraphrase but the gest is that mindfulness isn’t about slowing down, per se, but about living fully.
Living fully.
Showing up fully as me.
Freeing my joy to glow through attentive and abundantly exuberant steps.
And so as I courteously pass my fellow walker with her dog scampering for scents in the quiet winter ground, we smile and make small talk and there’s ease found in honoring my walk and creating room and space for hers.
We can both share the path. We can both journey at our own pace. We can both experience meaning in the feeling of being fully alive in our lives by moving in our own organic way. And whether slow and sweet or swift and sensational, we belong in the unfolding landscape.