Exercise

A vital part of our lives, from my view…

Pilgrim on a Long, Long Journey

A key reason I am disciplined about exercise is that I have a healthy fear of doing without it. I have seen an explosive, painful, heart attack in a man in an ER with a lot of fat around his belly, when I was a medical student. I still recall a prof in medical school who said obesity, in essence, increases the incidence of all disease. Exercise obviously can help keep the weight off. Power walking is my key exercise for aerobic conditioning.

But going beyond taking on flabbiness with power walking, I do resistance training, stretching, and tai chi. From what I have read, they are healthy habits. Not only are they beneficial but they are quite relaxing for me. As a result, I have a diminishing fear of loss as well as an increasing peace from my daily exercise.

Finally, as I am retired, the routine gives me…

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The Melodies of our Lives

“If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly, and my low spirits would brighten up.” Anna Akhmatova, the late Russian poet.

Anna touched upon what can help make one’s life worth living. My spouse Kristine is my music. Literally, I have always loved her voice. It’s sweet. It’s melodic. It’s enchanting.

I have actually been in groups, studying theology together, more than once, where, she would speak and I’d want to shout to the rooftops, “Isn’t her voice delightful?” The group would have carted me off to the nearest mental ward, so I have kept it to myself.

God is love. He imbues us with something we cannot see or prove in the laboratory, the capacity to love.

As I noted in my last memoir, Please Save the Third Dance for Me, Per Roger Cohen, a New York Times writer, “Life is a riddle whose only imperfect solution is love. Love cheats time because it’s passed along, refracted through the generations; and it’s the reason, with all its illusions, that we’re here in the first place.”