“Is it okay if I’m not perfect?” Yes, it is OK, it is only natural. It is to be expected. Very few of us can do much, but if we do the small things at the right time, we will be okay.

I wonder if people – those who notice me at all – think of me as something like the “1%” which people like to hate and envy in America because they are super rich. Not that I am rich by first world standards, but I mean, the envy is probably because people think “those guys have an easy life, while I have it tough.” And I can see why one would think the same about me.

I don’t think there are any, certainly not many, who really have it easy. Well, arguably those who are Enlightened, but usually there is a long and stony road to there. Anyway, not about Enlightenment this time. This is for the rest of us (?) who can’t do miracles even in our own lives.

You may think everything would be easier if you had more money, and I suppose if you are dirt poor that is true. But the happiness that can be bought with money fades very quickly, and you need something more grand to replace it. The joy you got from your first bike is something you can’t get again by buying a new bike once you’ve gotten your first car. Or your first Rolls Royce. You see what I mean? You have to top yourself the whole way, if you seek joy through purchases. This is why rich people say stupid things like “it is not easy for us either, the yacht took almost my whole Christmas bonus.” You probably say just as stupid things if someone in Congo could hear you.

Perhaps you resent me for being in the 1% who can eat all day and not get fat. (Actually I can’t eat all day. If I eat dinner when I come home from work, I stay full until bedtime. But you know what I mean. I never need to be hungry to stay seemingly slim.) Actually, it was not always like that. I was 20 pounds heavier for much of my adult life, until I had an illness in 2005 and became unable to digest fatty foods. You may envy me that if you want, and I will heartily welcome you to share my blessing if possible. But remember, if you eat cakes or steak or a plate of French fries, you’re gonna be so sick that you are ready to write your last will and testament. All things have their price. I did not really have the strength of will to lose weight before, although I have it now that I don’t need it…

Or you may resent me for being able to take long walks in the beautiful Norwegian nature. I guess that is something to be thankful for. But the truth is that when I come home from work, sitting down a few minutes seems like a great idea. And once you sit down, getting up is pretty hard. Norway may have a wonderful nature, but mine is so-so.

Getting up from the couch in front of the TV is probably hard. I don’t have that problem since I don’t have a TV, but getting up from a game of Sims 3 or City of Heroes is not all that easy either. This is not special for you or me. A well-known female trainer here in Norway wrote a while ago: “It is not like I don’t want to sit on the couch and eat chocolate too. But then I press PLAY and the music begins to move my body.” That was her trick to get moving: She had a source of music at hand, loaded with rhythms that filled her with energy. Once she was up and moving, she was OK. Most of us are. It is the mile from sitting to standing that is the hardest. The next mile is easy.

Another essay I read recently was by someone who had studied the nature of habits, and learned something important: Don’t set high goals. Or rather, you can have high aspirations, but your immediate goals must be so easy that you would feel stupid not reaching them. His example: Promise yourself that you will put on your running shoes when you come home from work. Don’t make a resolution to run every day, or at all. Just this: Put on the shoes. Once you have your shoes on, you can decide whether you want to take them off, or want to take a walk in them, or go running for a few minutes or for a long time. There may be all sorts of good reasons for one or the other. Just start with putting the shoes on. Unless you are ready for the ambulance, you can do that much.

And this is my sermon to you, dear congregation. ^_^ Let us put our shoes on. We can do that much. Let us put the music player handily by the couch, let us hide the snacks in the cupboard somewhere far from the TV or computer monitor. Small things like that. Things we can do, even though we are so much weaker than we wanted to be. Or you can do what I do, write a journal entry and let God or Fate read it, like when I joked that my New Year’s resolution was to lose weight without eating less or exercising more. Karma is a bit of a bitch though. I would recommend doing the little we can instead.

Screenshot from the anime Eyeshield 21, a recent sports anime. Like most of them, it’s about never giving up.

OK, let me explain the weird title. You know that there are young people who shut themselves in their rooms and watch anime (Japanese cartoons) and read manga (Japanese comic books) all day. Well, more or less. I think that is quite understandable. Japanese serial art is quite advanced and there is a broader range of it than we are used to in the west. In Japane, it is perfectly normal even for housewives and old folks to read comics, as there are series for all kinds of people and all kinds of interest.

For natural reasons, sports series are mostly enjoyed by the young. It typically has young protagonists, often in high school. There is some chaste romance, lots of comradeship, rivalry, and people finding noble motivations for doing their best. And of course there is the whole part about getting better and better. Just when you think you have reached the limit, some new challenge makes it necessary to become even better. Well, life is often like that when you are young. And later too, although it tends to involve work more often than sports for most of us.

Now, there may be thousands of animated TV series, but I doubt any of them has ever been about walking. There are limits to how boring things you can make interesting. But the same principles apply.

***

Last spring I decided to increase my walking from an hour on Saturday to an hour every other day, more or less. The thing that got me started was a couple scientific articles documenting that exercise at the level of fast walking could prevent and actually reverse cancer, as well as various other illnesses. So I began taking these walks regularly. I soon made it a habit to walk for an hour each day unless it was raining.

After only a few weeks, I noticed that I had to walk longer than before to fill that hour – meaning I walked faster – and yet I burned fewer calories (according to my pulse watch). I joked that if this continued, I would eventually be able to move from one place to another just by thinking about it. Of course that is not how it works: Practice does not actually make perfect, but it still makes you pretty good. I had to run a few steps now and then to keep the pulse at the same level as it had been while just walking.

In the summer, I met my first major challenge: Pain in my right foot. It grew rapidly worse, and for a while it was all I could do to get to my job and back. But after I moved, my foot healed rapidly and I began walking even longer, including over fairly large hills. I lost weight and my pulse got even lower than it already was.

In fall, I ran into a more serious challenge. My heartbeat began to grow irregular some days, and one afternoon while I was out walking, my pulse increased to its maximum and stayed there for a while, even when I was resting. Luckily I was near a school and someone called an ambulance. So this was exactly the kind of dramatic turn that you would expect from an anime. What will our hero do now?

Well, I went back to walking after some days, but without pressing myself as much as before. With the coming of winter, roads became slippery and I only walked when necessary. As soon as the ice left the roads, I started walking again.

Recently, the heart palpitations have come back, and I have had two episodes of tachycardia (racing heart). I am on the waiting list to talk with a doctor and have some measurements of my heart while I am walking, hopefully. In the meantime, I am walking, but mostly for half an hour instead of an hour.

Of course I am hoping that the story will progress the way any good anime should: Somehow we will get around the obstacle and I will continue to walk faster and faster, until I can run like the wind. OK, not really realistic with my exercise asthma, I guess. But I can sustain a combination of jogging and walking (mostly walking with brief jogs) already, so if I don’t have to worry about the heart, I should be able to train myself eventually to jog without triggering the asthma. That would be a lot of fun.

Of course, another recurring theme in sports anime is where the hero dies and the real main character swears to take up his mantle and win to honor his memory and show that he made a difference in the world. I would rather prefer this story to not have that ending, as you can imagine! But in the unlikely case that you read this after my passing – well, there is always that. The world needs its heroes – even the world of walking. For now, I shall be quite happy to play my part though!