When work ended early today, I found myself walking the mile and a half to an
afterschool pickup, rather than taking a bus or a train. Perhaps it was a
conditioned response, as I normally walk home from work. Perhaps it was
some sort of compensation for all the days I skip going to the gym.
Perhaps I figured it wouldn't hurt, in an uncertain work world, to save
the $2.50 bus fare. Or maybe, just maybe, I needed to "walk it off" in a
way just not possible on public transportation.
As I walked in what I'd expected to be a lovely daylight savings time
evening that was really a rainy almost spring night, I thought about my
day. Free of work walls and family voices, I began to process things
that had happened, interactions I'd had, things I might do. Instead of
watching out a window for my train or bus stop, I was focusing inside,
on things that have nowhere to be when there is only work and
transportation and home. And when I arrived, still on time, for the
pickup, I was not the same person who'd left work. Because in choosing
to walk rather than train-it or bus-it, I had allowed myself a little mind
transportation, the kind of transport that most of us need, but many of
us never get.
I love that I live in a city of buses and trains that can take you just
about anywhere. But sometimes, getting from A to B isn't about the
vehicle that takes you. Sometimes it's about walking it off, so that
when you get to B, you haven't just traveled from A to B, you can
really be somewhere different when you get there.
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