The Scene

I’ll start with some rambling - “Sprint the shorts, lunge the longs.”

It was a simple instruction given during a dry land practice for a casual swim team.

But if it were a guide to life, how could it be explained, justified?

Why rush through the short days and take forever on the others?

… It must be a matter of perspective. What’s in the quality of those ‘shorts’ and ‘longs’?

If the longs are good, take your time through them. But then, why not switch the good times with the shorts and lunge through them? Optimization of time spent?

What is the rationale for someone looking to make this a motto?

a little bit on my physique, first

I play tennis, table tennis,

A.K.A. Ping-Pong:

and run for my exercise. And thankfully, I’ve never had to suffer as some have had with knee problems, leg problems… or worse.

I was given a stranger, and hopefully lesser, condition called flat feet.

Having flat feet means that your feet will take (at varying degrees, depending on the arch in the foot) more shock than people without such feet.

But how does this stack up in the grand scheme of things?

analogizing the relationship between flat feet and time, using a concept in finance

In personal finance, we can view flat feet as a Roth IRA (Individual Retirement Account), wherein the pain received is the tax on your income contributions. A Roth IRA functions in that, as you get a paycheck, you opt to contribute some money from it to an account, which will be taxed in the present, but will become a larger AND tax-free collection of money waiting for you to dip into when you retire.

Hopefully by a later point in life your flat feet will have been corrected or taken care of, but in the present they can be a task to handle.

A fair number of people get the opposite, a traditional IRA, where you won’t have many tax problems until later down the road when it comes time to collect - the taxes come in full force then.

Likewise, most people won’t have issues walking until later in life.

Everyone’s overall taxes - and flat feet - are different, although for choosing an IRA you actually have a choice to make depending on your income tax bracket.. They both follow you until death, but they won’t most likely won’t stop you from joining the military (unless you levy taxes and poorly handle debt or suffer on a daily basis, which is something. But just like IRAs, many don’t know the difference between people with flat feet and without flat feet, even if they should when judging someone’s abilities (my dad used to do this to a fault, but heck, I still love and respect him).

Funny thing is, people with flat feet can’t even tell the difference between each other’s “accounts”:

1. Some need to stretch specific muscles every day.
2. Some have powerful leg and back pain.
3. Many end up purchasing medical equipment that supports the feet in dealing with daily impact that each foot receives.
4. Nearly all end up giving up something sooner than later.

So flat feet can cause issues early. I found that out the hard way.

no more running through the jungle

After having some aches and pains, I spoke to my doctor. And he suggested I stop and consider what activities I should continue doing. Weigh the pros and cons.

I quit running a little while after I was able to sustain a speed of roughly 14 kph for 1.5 km or so, within a larger series of 5 - 7 km per 25 minute run. For most, this probably isn’t much in society (apparently I’m the best house mouse if ever there was a contest), but for me, who comfortably ran at 7 kph a few months earlier, and who finished high school with a 5.5 minute kilometer time, it was fun and empowering to feel.

But the pains in my right foot still follow me today when I take evening walks. Occasional pains by the right ankle, and aches in the muscle and skeleton that I had never had the year before. I found I needed new sole inserts for my shoes after all the miles I ran, and all the treks uphill and downhill in snow to get to my college (wait, isn’t this supposed to be a different gen.’s complaint?)

It’s weird, accepting what you shouldn’t continue doing. It’s frustrating that when I start to jog I’ll feel a sensation in my feet, that when I walk a short distance barefoot they’ll feel like they’ve been beaten and bruised.

it’s annoying, is all…

It’s a long series of lunges for me to go places, and it has to be done because there are times when people need to go places.

And when I get there…

When I get there, I’ll usually be happy. Whether I reach a friend’s house after a long walk to cook something good, or make it up those stairs in spite of the stinging pain to see a friend, or when I finish a day in the city and see my friends smiling before we leave, I am good.

In those fleeting times of great peace and happiness that almost seem to run right by you, you should run with it. They’re

shorts to be sprinted for the moment.

In life, the shorts and longs are like that.

The bad days of screaming customers, angry folks, bad results, or growing anticipation and ire are

normal in long lunges, and are to be taken in a pace.

And as for the good times?

I don’t miss ‘em. I sprinted with them. I enjoyed them when they happened.

EDIT: This Al Jazeera video provides an interesting take on how to enjoy life.

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