A number of age-related physical challenges have descended upon me recently sufficient to discourage continued jogging; and walking can be even more painful. Notwithstanding yesterday, on a beautiful sunny day, I decided to see how I could manage with a jog/walk around Burnaby Lake.
The arbitrary Positive Word of the Day on my Systemagic FB (Meta?) page, yesterday, was ‘Adorable’. In recent years I’ve been experimenting with maintaining a single positive meditative thoughts while jogging and observing if there are any apparently related results. I’ve been letting the reverse-alphabetical order of the daily words choose which word it would be.
Running Miracles
As I started my 10-min. warm-up walk I realized that I was going to be looking for adorableness in the many people coming in the opposite direction. And you know what? Pretty much everyone on the trail that day was absolutely as cute as a frikin’ little button.
People of every age, some with doggies, couples, singles, a group of developmentally disabled young adults, and even squirrels and birds crossed my path,. I almost went critical mass into cuteness overload when an elderly man came along pulling a toddler in a home-made wooden wagon. Everyone was just adorable.
Evidently people on the streets of New York city find it socially acceptable to look each other in the face for 1.2 seconds and that face-to-face comfort zone extends as long as 3 or 4 seconds in other cultures. I’m pretty sure I exceeded all socially acceptable boundaries staring into their faces enjoying every adorable aspect of each visage – and many looked back as long as I kept looking.
Their reactions were great. I don’t think I’ve ever heard as many “Good-Morning”‘s on a single jog. Anticipating adorableness I must have been smiling because many of the faces of those I encountered melted into BIG beautiful smiles. One attractive dark-haired young lady with her hair in a bun looked like she was about to burst into tears until she looked at my face and burst into a big beautiful smile instead. What a wonderful experience; one made all the more sweet by the recognition that the resulting physical pain of these outings has become too high a price to pay.
Carpe Momento!
