One of my colleagues, who is a tad younger than me (truth be told, only one colleague at work is older than me!) and I were chatting like two getting-older men. I love those kinds of conversations. The topic of the moment somehow took us to fitness, exercise, and such. I shared that some years ago I had tried to take up jogging again, forever nostalgic for my days as a runner and track/cross-country coach, but I came upon a problem. My legs forget how to run – not jog, but run…the ability to shift gears, open the stride a bit. I could move along in small steps that I refused to call jogging, much less running. It took quite some time to get my legs to remember what my spirit held nostalgia for. (I tried again more recently, and my legs remembered, but my lungs and knees weren’t ready for the recalled abilities.)

He nodded. He admitted to trying something similar. Pain in his knees stopped him from continuing, so he went to his doctor. The wise physician referenced a certain roundness around the waist that the man did not have in his young-man years, and provided the man a short course in kinesiology and orthopedics: his body wasn’t moving like it used to, so pain resulted in the knees. The doctor’s wiser statement followed, one that my stubbornness, spirit and memories find hard to swallow. The doctor said, “Have you seen those really old guys who are out there moving like this?” while doing what I call a “shuffle,” but is, in fact, an old man jog. “Do that,” the doctor said.

When I see men moving like that on the street, I always think to myself, “At least he is out exercising,” but I find it hard for me to accept for myself doing “just” that. I want to stride up hills, sprint through turns at a speed that makes my remaining hair blow back, command my legs to go where I want and how I want, or hear the steady crunchy sound of the rhythm of spike-shoed feet striking the surface of a crushed brick track.

Alas, I need to swallow my pride and start with a shuffle and overcome tiredness and soreness with fond memories of days before.

There are a lot of things in life that we need to admit to needing to do a shuffle as we begin movement to our dreams, energized by our memories.