A Walk In The Park

It has been months since I last had my regular walk in the park which is a mile away from where I live. This morning when I woke up, I failed the motivation test as when I could not find my pedometer; I quit making the move to walk. I ended up internet browsing and reading instead.

By mid-day my daughter and I went to watch the latest Disney movie, Ratatouille. It was about a rat having a strong passion to become a chef. There’s lots of learning in the movie, about living your passion, about no giving up and about standing up to what you believe in. As we walked out of the cinema, my 15-year old daughter, Adilah said that she would want to be a chef.

She has always expressed her desire to be a chef. Ever since she was seven, she started watching all the cooking shows, experiments some recipes and at one point even sold some of her culinary delights to her classmates. Watching Ratatouille reinforced her passion and by now she is very sure of becoming a chef one day.

When evening comes, I started to feel restless and decided to take a walk in the nearby park. I put on my sports attire, my walking shoes and drove to the park. My target was to hit 2 rounds which cover approximately 2 miles. As I hit the ground, I started to savor the scenes at the park. First I encountered people feeding monkeys. There must be more than fifty monkeys, some adults and some looked like they’re mere babies a few weeks old. They looked so cute running around and eating bits of bread from the kind visitors.

The shooting fountain at the lake was also a great view and there’s a group of people scooping small fishes from the pond with their little nets. I wondered what they would do with the little fish they caught. Taking the fish from their natural habitat would surely shorten their life span.

As I continued walking, I met Marilyn, a colleague at work. I was inspired when I saw her as I knew that she just had a knee surgery and she is already walking. I used to see her when I walked during weekends.

At one point, I started to talk to the trees from my heart, that I missed them and thanked them for still being there for the rest of the joggers. I used to walk before sunrise and the air was fresher in the morning. The smell of the trees is fresher and the fragrance of the flowers is truly remarkable at 5.30 a.m. When I passed the waterfall, I stopped for a moment to savor the therapeutic sound and vision of the water flowing into the lake with the fish swimming underneath it. The scenery was worth savoring for.

I walked for 45 minutes and today reached 6,946 steps on my pedometer. My ultimate goal is to reach 10,000 steps on a daily basis. I have led a very sedentary life and most days I would clocked in around 1,200 steps. Can you believe that? I have always been very tired and use the excuse as coming home late from work for not walking or exercising.

Today, I am grateful that I made a choice to begin my exercise by taking a walk in the park.