Ekam1219

I started walking in mid-July. My excel spreadsheet now shows just about 250 miles walking. From July 15th, average of 10 miles per week, walking just under 3 days per week, and avg time out of 1:15 per walk. It has helped me to keep a chart and log the entries. So I’ve walked on 65 of the past 171 days, just under 40 percent of the days. Avg distance for each outing is 3.8 miles. If I were to put it into a tried-n-true exercise, I’d say go for a walk 3 days each week, and don’t worry about distance, but try to walk for at least one hour. It’s great mentally as well as physically.

I used to do this, and this goes back many years. However, I was never good at immediately writing down my dreams upon awakening in the mornings. Nor in the middle of the night if awakened suddenly. I most often would log the dream later that morning, or before the day ended. I’m not sure how well I can improve on that now, but I will try. I know that the dream recedes from memory the longer I go past the first moment of awakening. I’m going to aim also at a more focused study of the dreams and to learn to make use of them in my life more than just a log of memories to reflect upon. I have to change a few patterns of what I do just before sleep, and upon awakening. So, homework, and practice, lies ahead.

I consider this a lifetime project; never perfected (that makes no sense to me), but always making progress, always another step. And while it is never finished, it can be true that “I am actually doing it” for any moment of any day. That seems reasonable and obtainable. A small pie is, after all, a whole pie. A circle is completely a circle, but the radius can expand by degrees over time. Like so many, I am not unfamiliar with the concept “just be yourself,” and I have made a few strides up that hill and along that trail, but recently I was given a most helpful jolt when I came across the writings of a no-muss, no-fuss philosopher, Epictetus (c.AD 55-135). Be myself is my first and top-of-the-list of 43 Things, and will remain in the status “I’m doing this” with no “I’m done” to it. Here, from Robert Dobbin’s translation of the Enchiridion (the Manual), Ch. 51, “You’re not yet Socrates, but you can still live as if you want to be him.” And so I shall.