Walking In The Park

Henry David Thoreau went to the woods and lived on Walden Pond.

I walk in the local park near my home.

Thoreau wanted to live deliberately.  I want to stay healthy and avoid depression.

Thoreau wanted to “front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived“.

I want to pass life with more than a C+ average.  My granddaughter struggles with mathematics.  I struggle with happiness.

My day started fine.  I took my wife to work, came home and meditated, watched a little news, and then went to the grocery store.  My cashier was an older lady who told me she was a retired teacher.  She told me she could only take retirement for about three months before she became bored enough to take a part time job as a cashier at Kroger.  I told her I was at the three month time frame too and retirement had been a struggle for me as well.  She repeatedly used the term “a sense of purpose”.  I flashed back to my Humana days and remembered that a sense of purpose was one of four pillars that defined well-being.  I told her I wasn’t quite ready to jump from one rat race into another one.  I hope I don’t end up finding my sense of purpose as a Kroger cashier or a Walmart greeter.

About midday I realized my mood was not going in the right direction.  Although an 80 year old would think I am just a kid, I was feeling old and a little sad when I watched a Moody Blues concert celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the “Days Of Future Passed” album.  There is nothing that can make you feel old faster than a 50 year old memory.

This is when I knew I had to go walk in the park.

It was a beautiful day in the park.  Though bright and sunny there was still a chill in the air.  I have noticed that other walkers in the park seem to be in a Zen like trance where all they see is the path.  I suppose I look the same to them.

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away”.
-Henry David Thoreau

I am not sure I am hearing a different drummer or any drummer at all right now.