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!
Part arthritis, part from scopic knee surgery years ago! I need cortisone shots but I'd have to go every week! And I have callous on my heels and not sure what's wrong with my big toe! Could be callouses too! I have a foot Dr. appointment on Monday. I wear special diabetic shoes and the shoes need to be ordered by the foot Dr. I just took a short walk down to the Middle School and back home! The weather is lousy! Cold and gloomy!
That's a tough diagnosis, Connie. I don't think I would like shots every week! Have they talked to you about artificial knee replacements? That's what I have to have.
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.
Seeing the "slowness problem" from this angle, I'm beginning to see why many retired people prefer to live in the retirement communities that are cropping up all over the country. Maybe they've grown tired of overhearing the complaints of young children and the shushing of their parents. Maybe they don't want to be seen as a "road bump" slowing everyone down, anymore. Take a place like Top of the World in Florida--everyone there is moving at the speed of light...in reverse. ;-) No one gets in anyone's way and there is plenty of "misery loves company" if that's what one is into. When they play a roaring (for them) game of pickle ball, they don't have to worry about being laughed at. I personally like having all ages around me, but if I ever started overhearing impatient sighs and seeing bored eye-rolls, I think I'd low-tail it to a place where no one even noticed I only have two speeds: slow and stop.
Robert and I are doing the 55+ community living thing and we love it. We golf cart everywhere and the amenities are many. I thought I would miss the different ages, too, but I don't, not really, especially in the pools.
Aha! Just as I suspected. I'll bet if you stayed there just 6 months without ever going off "off-post", when you finally did venture out, you'd be appalled!
Well, that will never happen. We do have to go off post for doctor appts. We can have our families visit from up north, so the community does have the younger generation infiltrate ---the teens love driving their grandparents' golf carts around!
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!
Connie, I'm so sorry you have such pain. Is it arthritis?
Part arthritis, part from scopic knee surgery years ago! I need cortisone shots but I'd have to go every week! And I have callous on my heels and not sure what's wrong with my big toe! Could be callouses too! I have a foot Dr. appointment on Monday. I wear special diabetic shoes and the shoes need to be ordered by the foot Dr. I just took a short walk down to the Middle School and back home! The weather is lousy! Cold and gloomy!
That's a tough diagnosis, Connie. I don't think I would like shots every week! Have they talked to you about artificial knee replacements? That's what I have to have.
No, no one really says anything! I haven't seen the orthopedic doctor in years!
It might be time to do that again.
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.
I wish I could answer your profound comment, but I wouldn't know where to begin. Thank you for reading my post and for taking time to comment.
Seeing the "slowness problem" from this angle, I'm beginning to see why many retired people prefer to live in the retirement communities that are cropping up all over the country. Maybe they've grown tired of overhearing the complaints of young children and the shushing of their parents. Maybe they don't want to be seen as a "road bump" slowing everyone down, anymore. Take a place like Top of the World in Florida--everyone there is moving at the speed of light...in reverse. ;-) No one gets in anyone's way and there is plenty of "misery loves company" if that's what one is into. When they play a roaring (for them) game of pickle ball, they don't have to worry about being laughed at. I personally like having all ages around me, but if I ever started overhearing impatient sighs and seeing bored eye-rolls, I think I'd low-tail it to a place where no one even noticed I only have two speeds: slow and stop.
Robert and I are doing the 55+ community living thing and we love it. We golf cart everywhere and the amenities are many. I thought I would miss the different ages, too, but I don't, not really, especially in the pools.
Aha! Just as I suspected. I'll bet if you stayed there just 6 months without ever going off "off-post", when you finally did venture out, you'd be appalled!
Well, that will never happen. We do have to go off post for doctor appts. We can have our families visit from up north, so the community does have the younger generation infiltrate ---the teens love driving their grandparents' golf carts around!
Oh, that does sound like the idyllic life!
Great writing as usual
🤍🤍🤍 Thank you, Robert!