I started working out a little the other day.

“Little” is the best description I could come up with.

It’s not a full-on onslaught…..it’s just a few pushups…maybe a sit-up or two.

But it’s a start.

Movement of any kind….that’s not just opening a mailbox…is good for me.

It made me remember the few times I’ve been sick enough to want/need to stay in bed for a couple of days.

I’d lay there….feverish and immobile…and wait out whatever was keeping me down.

It wasn’t so much the sickness that I’m thinking about…it’s how it felt to finally be well enough to start moving.

It was like someone had finally taken the hobbles off and I could run again.

Maybe “not moving” makes me sick?

Maybe it just keeps me from feeling as good as I could…if I was moving I might feel better.

That’s the problem with comparisons and a long memory….I remember how it felt to be working out.

I remember that it felt pretty darn good to be active and sweat a little.

It’s a simple prescription for a “feel good life”.

Then I started thinking about hobbles.

In the case of a horse, someone else has to put on the hobbles.

A horse doesn’t have the manual dexterity to hobble himself.

He just wouldn’t do it, anyway.

Who would be crazy enough to want to approach immobility if you had a chance to run free all the days of your life?

Hmmmmmmm……who would be crazy enough to do something like that?

Maybe…..maybe….ME !!

Me and my opposable thumbs.

Who else would hobble a man?

Who else would keep him from running…free?

It’s funny how that works….you give yourself access to something that sparks a memory of the wind hitting your face a certain way…or watching a thunderstorm move across a ridge somewhere in another piece of your life….and, all of a sudden, you remember how different it feels with the hobbles you now wear……the ones you’d forgotten that you’d put on yourself.

You remember how different it feels to express even the smallest of freedoms and run to the end of your tether…the tether that you tied with the tightest knot you could manage to make.

The “smallest of freedoms”….that’s what you look for….that narrow unlocked window of opportunity that’s always open if you look for it.

There are a million and one….maybe a million and two…excuses for why we can’t do things….many of them totally legitimate….but there are so many things that we can do that we talk ourselves out of.

“Too old….too tired…too poor…too many responsibilities….” blah, blah, blah…on and on….talk, talk, talk.

There is always a chance to make things better.

There isn’t a reason in the world to keep that from happening.

Things can be even better than “really good”.

So…you do 10 pushups for a while….and then you graduate to a full workout…..and you realize that there never were any real “hobbles” to begin with.

I put these hobbles on…I can take them off.

I need to quit my whining and run.