the longest walk…

“The longest walk starts with a single step” — Lao Tzu

It’s never too late to be the person you want to be, whether that means finding your magical castle, performing on a big stage, or discovering the power of your own body. It may take a little more effort or some added motivation, but what I discovered is that stepping out of my comfort zone was well worth the discomfort.

When I was very small, I struggled with motor skills. I was a late walker. My mother told me that I was two and a half years old when I began walking on my two feet. Before then, I did what I’ve read is described as “bear walking.” I walked with both feet and hand on the floor. She said that I did that very fast and that I never crawled.

When you’re a little kid, you’re in your own little kid world at home, and that’s a nice cocoon. But you don’t get to stay in the cocoon forever. Eventually, you have to fly or, at least, attempt to fly.

When I started kindergarten a few weeks before my fifth birthday, I was surrounded by kids who were larger and stronger and more coordinated than I was. And that continued throughout my time in school. And so, I learned to dread gym class. It was too loud for my sensitive ears and too chaotic for my over reactive nervous system. I always felt that I was competing with kids who were two to three years ahead of me. They were strong and I was weak. They were coordinated, and I was clumsy. They were fast and I was…

You get the picture, I’m sure.

So, being chosen last for teams sent a message of you’re not good enough.

I felt that I was not good enough, that I wasn’t strong enough, that I was very much not an athlete. People who believe that they have zero athletic ability generally don’t try to push their bodies to do more.

One day, when I was on the Walk for a Nuclear Free Future in 2010, I was with another person and we were running to catch up with the rest of the group. The other person was talking to me about my “athletic talent.”

As I ran, I said, “I have no athletic talent.”

She asked me about that, and I told her how I couldn’t judge the speed of a softball that was pitched to me. I always perceived the ball as being closer than it actually way. Because I thought that the ball was too close, I jumped out of the way.

“Well,” she said. “Did you ever get hit by the ball?”

“Heck no, I didn’t get hit,” I said, explaining how fast I jumped (in terror).

“Then you have athletic talent,” she said.

I never thought of it that way,” I said while I was actually running.

Six years ago, a friend announced on Facebook that she was planning on doing a physical fitness challenge and that anyone who was interested could join her.

“I want to do that,” I said enthusiastically, not to mention impulsively. Which is not unusual for me. My decision to do the entire Witness Against War walk in 2008 was an impulsive one. I thought, “Yep, sure I can walk 400 miles,” when I said, “Oh, I want to do the whole walk!” Due to errors in mapping and mistakes in how distance was calculated by mapquest, the distance was actually closer to 500 miles.

“How could I have walked 500 miles?” I wondered after I had abruptly signed onto something that I knew would be very physically challenging for me. “I’m going to last two weeks with this fitness challenge.”

I lasted two weeks and another two weeks and the weeks spun into months and the months into years. And now, six years have passed. I have defied all of my beliefs that I am weak, uncoordinated, and unathletic. I grew into strength and confidence.

I learned that part of the reason I had those negative beliefs was just because of the way my body works (or doesn’t work). I have issues with balance. I may have had issues with low muscle tone and hypermobile joints. My joints are still loose and bendy. Which is nice, except that I’ve never been able to do a split because my hamstrings are actually and rudely tight. But six years of working out has had an effect. I’m no longer told, “You can’t.” If I struggle to do an exercise, the instructor asks me if I’d like it to be modified. And I gratefully say yes.

I have so much more strength than I had before I started the physical fitness challenge. When I began, I was using soup cans as weights. Now I have five sets of weights: three pound, five pound, eight pound, ten pound, and twelve pound. I go to the MOG (medically oriented gym), and I participate in a circuit training class. I have learned that my physical fitness journy is not about comparing myself to others, but to watching my own growth. I have seen growth, which is exciting. Core work has improved my balance, which I previously thought was a lost cause. I still have those pesky inner ear issues, but developing physical strength has helped a great deal with improving my balance.

I am thankful for the stronger and healthier Alice I have become. It took a long time for me to understand the wonderfulness and the value of physical fitness routine because my gym class experience when I was in school was so terrible, from the ill fitting gym uniform that I wore to the dodgeball games where the kids dliberately threw the ball hard directly at me to the teacher who suggested that I drop out of the synchronized swimming show because I was incapable of learning the skills. I stubbornly refused to quit the show and, afterwards, she said, “Good job.” Now, kids like me would get accommodations for their disabilities. The teachers would adapt the activities and the equipment to the developmental level I was at, as opposed to simply expecting that I would keep up with my classmates.

Which brings me back to my quotation. You can do more than you think you can do. You are stronger than you believe you are. You can shatter all low expectations of your abilities. You can choose to take that journey of growth remembering that “The longest walk begins with a single step.”