How far did you walk today? Do you really want to know?
"The average moderately active person takes about 7500 steps a day. Assuming every day the person walks, an eighty year old person who began walking at one year of age, would have taken 216,262,500 steps in their lifetime. An average person, with an average stride, living to this age of 80 will walk about 108,131 miles." -- Answers.com
When we're feeling well, how casually we walk to the kitchen for a cup of coffee or out to the mailbox to see if the mail has arrived. Sometimes people doing housework say they feel like they've walked several hundred miles between dawn and dusk. Sometimes we're walking behind a lawn mower and our yards appear immense or into the high country along the Appalachian Trail where the miles are either short or long depending on the view and our level of fitness.
When we're stuck in line at the DMV or at the polls or at a popular movie, we seem to be taking no steps at all. When we're walking with a friend and having a good conversation, we're seldom aware of the steps. On a long hike, we may get so tired, we can hardly take even one more step.
One of the themes in the novel Dune was the ability of psychics to see the steps--figuratively speaking--a person had taken during his or her lifetime to arrive at the emotional and physical place where they were in life. The steps taken, en route to success or failure, were as clear at footprints left in a desert.
If we could see every step taken, no doubt our houses, yards and offices would appear to be covered with footprints. Our regular routes to and from the bed or the sink or the garage would look like well-worn trails. We would see steps we wanted to erase, either because they went down wrong roads or reminded us of our failures. Other steps would remind us of old friends, satisfying jobs, and pleasant events and we'd look at them fondly.
Perhaps our lives could be charted out like a FAMILY CIRCUS cartoon that showed Billy's rather convoluted paths through the neighborhood that were impacted by spur-of-the moment decisions, animals and other people and random events. I wonder if we would change anything if we could see our steps-taken-to-date like the psychics in Dune or dotted lines Bil Kean's cartoons.
Would such knowledge alter our future or would it make us look at where we are at this moment with greater appreciation? Or, maybe we would feel really tired.
--Malcolm
When we're feeling well, how casually we walk to the kitchen for a cup of coffee or out to the mailbox to see if the mail has arrived. Sometimes people doing housework say they feel like they've walked several hundred miles between dawn and dusk. Sometimes we're walking behind a lawn mower and our yards appear immense or into the high country along the Appalachian Trail where the miles are either short or long depending on the view and our level of fitness.
When we're stuck in line at the DMV or at the polls or at a popular movie, we seem to be taking no steps at all. When we're walking with a friend and having a good conversation, we're seldom aware of the steps. On a long hike, we may get so tired, we can hardly take even one more step.One of the themes in the novel Dune was the ability of psychics to see the steps--figuratively speaking--a person had taken during his or her lifetime to arrive at the emotional and physical place where they were in life. The steps taken, en route to success or failure, were as clear at footprints left in a desert.
If we could see every step taken, no doubt our houses, yards and offices would appear to be covered with footprints. Our regular routes to and from the bed or the sink or the garage would look like well-worn trails. We would see steps we wanted to erase, either because they went down wrong roads or reminded us of our failures. Other steps would remind us of old friends, satisfying jobs, and pleasant events and we'd look at them fondly.
Perhaps our lives could be charted out like a FAMILY CIRCUS cartoon that showed Billy's rather convoluted paths through the neighborhood that were impacted by spur-of-the moment decisions, animals and other people and random events. I wonder if we would change anything if we could see our steps-taken-to-date like the psychics in Dune or dotted lines Bil Kean's cartoons.
Would such knowledge alter our future or would it make us look at where we are at this moment with greater appreciation? Or, maybe we would feel really tired.
--Malcolm
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