Fitness, Strength, Balance

Today I signed up for a Fall semester online course at my local community college. The class focuses on low impact fitness, strength, and balance. Currently, I try to walk ½ hour four or five days each week, but it’s imperative for me to add dedicated, physical exercise to my schedule. Taking care of myself in this way is part of my commitment to remain healthy as I gradually age.

I’ve also started my downsizing process. It happened quite spontaneously while my two youngest grandsons shared my duplex for a few days. We were in my bedroom where a mound of stuffed animals was piled when I offhandedly asked them if they’d like to help me begin downsizing. Eager to facilitate this activity they began culling the pile, choosing to keep only their most adored cuddly treasures. Gray Mew, Ima Squeal, Mr. Golden and, of course, Whale, were amongst the favorite few.

One thankful cull was a very ugh-ly girl monkey with long cheetah print legs and curly toe elf shoes with bells who had been separated from her equally ugly boy monkey some eight plus years previously at the time I became single again. Don’t really know why I even kept her except that the pair had been very expensive. The boys and I enjoyed saying Eeewwww over and over, laughing heartily. Very liberating.

Then we started in on the purses. Crammed into a square storage cube with a cushioned lid upon which the stuffed animals had resided, they were pulled out one by one, then mostly relegated to a large garbage bag destined for Goodwill. The boys were excited thinking about the happy children who would someday own their treasured toys, already filling two paper grocery bags. I was relieved to un-own the nice, but way-too-many-in-the-first-place, purses. It was a good beginning –and fun. Accordingly, I feel more lighthearted about a process I was dreading.

My future is fitness, strength, and balance. Not just in my physical body, but in how I move forward in my retirement years. It is fitting that I let go of belongings I no longer use or need. There are others who will happily take possession of them. Knowing I am going forward gives me strength to gently let go of my current lifestyle. My lifestyle is not me, it’s just where I am right now.

Most of all, as I re-balance how I will live in this world, I choose to be unencumbered with whatever status quo I once embraced, for even the best of reasons. Indeed, like Canadian geese either flying north for the summer or south for the winter, suspended in air, it does not matter where my destination lies –only the flight itself.