A Sunday Stroll

On Sunday I ventured, along with Mr. Main Squeeze and my dog Pax, to West County Park.  I have not done much walking since my knee surgery in December, and each time I tried to walk any distance I would pay for it later with more pain.  But perhaps I've turned a corner in that regard, since we walked, slowly and mindfully so as not to slip or slide, for a good half hour.  And a good half hour it was, in this small park with not much but trees, a trail, delightfully quiet, surrounded by cornfields of course as this is central Illinois.  This time my pain was not any worse, which is a great joy to me as I love walking especially among trees.

I'm reading another Rebecca Solnit book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost.  No, I have not yet finished Hope in the Dark.  I'm just...well, getting lost among non-fiction books.  I haven't been a big fan of non-fiction until recently.  Now I am hooked on it, and imitating Mr. Squeeze whose reading taste is eclectic and his style is not bogged down in rule-following conventions of finishing one book before picking up another.

I miss the days of wandering in Ecuador, walking places not on the map, not in parks, just little country roads or even chakinyans (Quichua for cow-path, I think).  Not knowing where I would end up or how I would get home.  Sometimes it was by hitchhiking or hailing a bus, sometimes walking back the way I came.  My daughter asked me the other day if I could live 2-3 years over again which would I choose.  I didn't hesitate...'95 to '97 when I lived in Ecuador.  All that glorious wandering, spiritually, physically, all that time to read and think and process.  That wonderful parenthesis of not working during my adult life for a few years.  I am ready to pause again like that.  Will you join me for a stroll?

Synchronicity

I love it when things I'm reading, watching, thinking, and wondering about are in sync!  Yesterday I watched the final episode of The Good Place with Sisi.  Earlier in the day I had read an essay by Rebecca Solnit in Hope in the Dark called "Getting the Hell out of Paradise."  Who knew that a clever TV comedy and a philosophical essay about political activism would essentially say the same thing?

Now that I've reread that, of course, I realize the The Good Place is a clever TV comedy about moral philosophy.  So, duh!

Here is the quote from Ms Solnit that sums up the take home message:

"The industrialized world has tried to approximate paradise in its suburbs, with luxe, calme, volupte, cul-de-sacs, cable television and two-car garages, and it has produced a soft ennui that shades over into despair, a decay of the soul suggesting that paradise is already a gulag."

The final episode of The Good Place essentially demonstrated the same thing - heaven was joyless because it was perfect and went on FOREVER.  (And yes I do see the irony in her "cable television" reference, thank you.)  And the Good News is that they figure out how to fix that minor flaw.

It's the journey not the destination is a lesson I seem to need to learn over again.  It's the fact that life is finite and uncertain that makes it so dear.

So today take a few moments to pause and embrace the exquisite experience of life on Earth.  Or take the whole day to do just that!