Look Before You Leap

​The painting I included today was a result of a bit of experimentation. I felt stuck so I started dabbing paint on a canvas and then started making a few connections. I think turned out to be an interesting pattern. Sometimes you need to experiment. 

Being young is all about experimentation, but sometimes, when you're young, you do stupid things. Lots of those things are fun, or you probably wouldn't do them. 

Stupid thing, I loved to jump off the roof on my house when I was a teenager. I loved the feeling of falling, and I liked that fact that my body didn't break when I landed. I'm glad I didn't live in a two story house.  That could have been a problem. 

With the ice hockey, football, baseball, and the whole Marine Corps frivolity I participated in when I was younger it's incredible I'm still in one piece. 

I used to love to run until my body became a collection of aches and pains to teach a lesson. This sixty-year-old corpus is much more delicate than it was at sixteen. Probably a result of the running and jumping and other silly things. 

When I stopped running, pounds started piling on. The more I weighed, the more all my parts began creaking and cracking. The more it hurts, the less I walked. 

I had to turn it around somehow, and I started to ride a stationary bike. That allowed me to build muscles in my legs without the pounding that happens when you walk or run. 

It doesn't bother me so much to walk anymore, and I am grateful for that. I suppose my knees have declared a moratorium on the pain.

A couple of weeks ago we were in the Derbyshire Dales. There are plenty of footpaths and hiking trails there. I was feeling a bit froggy, and I jumped from one rock to another. 

You'd think it wouldn't be a big deal. I certainly didn't. It wasn't a big jump. Frogs jump further. I think I've even jumped farther if somebody sneaked up behind me. 

It was about a two-foot drop. When I landed, I felt a jolt of lightning from my ankles through my knees up into my back and straight through to the base of my skull. 

Landing from a jump of about two feet as a 240-pound creaky sucker is different than it was from my former spry 175-pound self. 

I kept a stern face on and promised that it didn't hurt at all. God forbid I should admit I did something stupid. I knew the ache would go away in a little bit anyway, and it did. 

The stuff that you do when you're young catches up with you when you pile on a few years. I have to live with the aches and pains caused by a misspent youth. And, I guess I'm not over making stupid choices quite yet. 
More on the decisions we make at a later date. For now, I will look before I leap next time and give my old, frail body time to catch up.  

Until next week, I wish you peace. 

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