PERSPECTIVE IS EVERYTHING

We get spoiled as adults, I think. Though life can be tough (and often is a bee-yotch), I think that we take for granted the luxuries of life. Take, for instance, the automobile. Most of us have cars, as adults. It is only when they're on the fritz that we truly understand how much of a privilege, how much of a luxury, car ownership is.

My brake lights have been staying on, when the car is in any gear other than Park, for about a month, now. I--and my co-worker--tried installing a new brake switch today and, when that didn't solve the quandary, I drove my little Focus hatchback to the garage after work and dropped it off. I told the uber-sun-touched woman behind the desk what the problem was and then I commenced to hoof it to my house. The garage is located at Nine-and-a-half and Hilton and I live two blocks east of Ten-and-a-half and Hilton. A little more than a mile away. My backpack was slung over my left shoulder and my red plastic Coleman lunchbox was in my right hand.

Now, I used to walk to and from when I was in grade school. 'Twas about a mile from my house. There and back. Two miles a day.

To have never had is far better than to have had and then lost.

Exercise excluded, I think the difference between walking when you're a kid and walking when you're an adult is that you've been conditioned, as a "grown-up", to go from Point A to Point B in as little time as possible. As a kid, you just haven't been initiated into the Kar Klub and so you know not what could be.

Slow it down. Walk it. Right? Well, no. Not really. Actually, I like being able to climb into a wheeled machine and go from Point A to Point B in eight minutes rather than thirty.

But, here's the rub: I like walking, once in a while. The world slows down. I'm not in such a rush. I see things that I'd never have seen had I been behind the wheel. I guess this is kind of akin to taking rural highways on trips rather than bulleting along on the super expressways. You see more of Life.

I'm sorry. I'm taking a simple walk from the garage and turning it into some kind of life experience. It truly wasn't all that. But...it made me think. It stretched my mind, a bit. I didn't see anything special. Nothing to write home about. Though what I saw was Ordinary, seen through a different perspective, it became Extraordinary. [Just a brief interjection, here: "Extraordinary" seems like a misnomer. If something is "extraordinary" would that not mean that it were "ordinary" jacked up; would it not be "ordinary" on steroids? If so, why would that be a superlative? Wouldn't it mean that whatever was just as ordinary, if not more ordinary, as ordinary could be?]

Anyway, things are seen differently through a walker's eyes. Blurs of pedestrians become three-dimensional people. Dogs on the sidewalk become, perhaps, threats instead of four-legged sidewalk canterers. A house's landscaping can be appraised at a more moderate pace. It's actually kind of cool.

This really wasn't meant to be a kind of slow-down-and-smell-the-roses type of post, but I guess it turned into just that.