I overheard this conversation from the next checkout lane in Walmart. So did a lot of other people: “Dad, why do old people walk so slow? He keeps stopping and it makes me bump into him with our cart.”
Poor dad was obviously embarrassed and he shushed his son. “Jeremy, shhhh, stop that. He can’t help it. Go on over there and stand with your mother.”
I don’t know what happened next. I was in a hurry and it was my turn to check out, but I’ve thought about that boy’s remark several times since. At the time, the old guy wasn’t that much older than I am now.
Why do old people walk slow? Age? Pain? I think it’s something else, something bigger, something more interesting. It wasn’t until I retired that I began to understand.
Gather round, young-uns, Grand-Mama’s gonna share something important:
We older folks went through near a lifetime rushing here to there, always in a hurry, counting minutes to make it back on time to where we just left. We missed so much more than we ever had time to see.
Now here we are, the pressure is off, the rush is gone. We’ve outlived our jobs, the kids are grown —now it’s their turn to hurry ‘cause they have to rush back to where they were, so they will be on time.
This time belongs to us —we’ve earned it. Now when we go somewhere, we own the time to slow down and look. We get to see what we want to see, or might have missed. If we need a bigger look, we own the time to stop, too. We can let those minutes die ‘cause there’s no place we’ve gotta rush back to. Not anymore.
Next time you’re out and about and you see one of us walking slow, maybe even stopping —just smile. Now you know why.
Someday, maybe someday soon, you’ll be the one … who owns the time … to slow way down … to see what you want to see …. when you want to see it … and go as slow as you want … maybe you’ll even wanna … stop … for a closer look ...
Well, I know why I walk slowly! PAIN! Both knees and feet really hurt! I don't drive any more, so I hardly go anywhere, except to appointments but my son takes me and I don't even go for walks like I did! I know I should walk but I hardly do that anymore! I loved walking the blocks near my home and beyond! Past schools, Turkey Hill, Churches, homes and retail stores! I keep telling myself that I will go for a walk and then I don't! Even if I just go for a short walk, one block or down to the Middle School and back home! I will walk one day!
Time and my perception or understanding of it has changed as I have changed. I no longer understand time in terms of sequential events, past and future. St. Augustine wrote that in order to remember and to experience futurity and expressions of it like hope and expectation, we must be able to forget. I think that he was articulating something like what I have come to believe: that there is the universe, a kaleidoscope of events and simultaneities, most of which lie out of our spare of comprehension, and then there is our slice of the pie, an amalgam of contingent phenomena to which we assign such categories of ordering and understanding as causality, sequences, memories, predictive processes, hopes, fears, and a panoply of other virtues, vices, pleasures and pains. Is there a reality beyond, beneath or behind what we perceive? What we call time and understanding don't seem to be operative without entities for us to understand by ascribing to them physical attributes, logical ordering, temorality, etc. Do any of these mentally assignations conform to any external reality? I doubt it. Astronauts seem to weigh less and to have experienced a different measurement of events on a time line.in effect they have experienced a different past, present and future than their earth bound colleagues. In effect they have experienced a different "slow" than did the boy in Walmart.