Walking with Gratitude

Walking with Gratitude
Joyce Moseley Pierce

During this season of gratitude and thanksgiving,
I wanted to write about something we do every day
with very little thought. Something we’ve been
doing since we were very small. Most of us did
it before we even talked. I’m talking about
walking.

The way I see it, there are basically four reasons
we walk

1.Travel – To get from one place to another.
We don’t even think about getting up each morning
and walking from our bed to the bathroom, but I
watched my elderly grandmother as an invalid for
many years and gained an appreciation for my ability
to get up and go wherever I wanted without help from
anyone else.

2.Pleasure – I remember taking walks with my
grandfather and my dad as a child, and that
tradition has continued with my own grandkids.
When the grandkids come to visit, they love to
walk down to the lake in our neighborhood to feed
the ducks. Part of the enjoyment, I believe,
is just being away from everyone else. We walk,
we talk, and we just enjoy one another’s
company. When I was in Las Vegas for the
birth of a new granddaughter, I walked the other
two kids to school one day. My granddaughter,
Olivia, who was 5 at the time, stopped other kids
along the way to say, “My grandma is walking me
to school.” She was so proud, and I am so thankful
to have the health to be able to walk with her.

3.Exercise – Walking is one of the best ways to
exercise. You can walk at the pace you need to
reach the desired heart rate. All you need is a
pair of good walking shoes. No clubs to join.
No classes to attend. You can walk during the
day or at night. Inside or out. In the mall or
on a treadmill. If you need more of a challenge,
you can carry a backpack with additional weight,
or you can swing your arms to raise your heartrate.
You will find that your legs have to move as fast
as your arms. Even if you’re uncoordinated, it is
impossible for your legs not to follow your arms.
Try it.

4.Peace of mind – You’ve heard of the “fight or
flight” response? When I am upset or when I have
things to work out in my mind, I go for a walk.
I may start out stomping as I try to release
anger, but by the time I get back home, I have
worked through it and my mind has been cleared
so that I can think rationally. Instead of sitting
in a chair stewing about a problem, or getting
into a fight with someone, walking can be great therapy,
and you may be able to find a rational way to resolve
the problem.

I suppose walking is one of those things I’m especially
grateful for because when I was a year old my mother
realized I wasn’t walking properly. It looked
like one leg was longer than the other, but the actual
problem was that the leg hadn’t joined the hip properly.
After tearfully pleading with other family members who
wanted to deny there was anything wrong with their
little girl, she made an appointment with an orthopedic
surgeon and I was put in a body cast that went from under
my arms to my knees. I spent the next year in that
cast. I probably weighed as much as my mother did with
that plaster cast. As an adult, my aunts and uncles told
me about how horrified they had been when they saw
"the horrible cast" and feared it would keep me from doing
things other one year-olds did. They told of their joy
when they saw that I not only learned to walk, but run and
climb in spite of the challenges I had.

Probably the most valuable lesson from that experience
was that I learned that with encouragement, I could not
only walk, but I was given the confidence to believe
that I could do anything.

On Thanksgiving when you stuff yourself with turkey,
instead of curling up on the couch and taking a nap,
think about taking a walk instead. It will help
revive you and give you the time you need to think
about the things you’re grateful for.