Harper The Dog and I were – you guessed it – on a walk at the park when I noticed a man and woman coming slowly up the path towards us. The woman was using a walking stick, and she was moving very slowly.
I asked Harper to sit, as I do for all passerby’s, and when the man reached us, he stopped to talk. Almost everybody stops to talk to Harper; he’s quite the attention getter.
His wife caught up to us, and we had the most delightful conversation. They lived in Woodstock, about 20 miles away, and they said that they come to the park often.
Animated, they told me about how they love living in their house in Woodstock so much that they have hesitated to move into a smaller house, even though they don’t really need all the space they have.
They told me how much they love their walks in the park, and seeing the colors change in the prairie all through the seasons. I love that too.
She told me about a dog that her grandmother had, when she was a little girl, living on her grandmother’s farm.
It was clear to me, just from a few moments of conversation, that they loved their whole lives, and each other.
They loved to stay active, and they loved being out in Nature. They love it so much that they frequently drive 20 miles to the park.
Then, he told me he was ninety years old.
I loved this couple immediately. They inspired me, with their clear commitment to grab life and live it to the hilt. With their commitment to remain active, they were exactly the antidote I needed to counteract all of our cultural beliefs that aging is a slow, painful decline into inactivity and death.
We said goodbye, and they moved at a crawl, up the steep hill that Harper and I had just come down. I marveled at their vitality and their positive spirit. I felt so blessed that they had come across my path that day. What a gift.
They are who I want to be, with however much time I have.
Who do you want to be?
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