The Barn Down the Road

For the last four mornings I’ve gotten up, put on my sandals, and walked down the road in front of our house. It’s a fairly typical Maine road with lots of woods on either side, and a house now and then. It also has a cemetery, and a beautiful old barn.

I’m not sure why I have started doing this, except that it is so beautiful in the mornings and I often miss them entirely. I don’t go far, mind you. It takes me about 15-20 minutes, but it helps me clear my mind, gives me a place to think and pray, readies me for the day.

It’s funny what surfaces when you give yourself that kind of space. On one walk, I ended up thinking about my body. When I was a dancer, I thought about my body a lot. It was my tool box. Now, I rarely think of it unless it is misbehaving, or not fitting into my old clothes. But it is still there, -- the outward shape of me.

In thinking about it, I found that my thoughts and feelings were heavy, limited, negative. I know enough about the connection between my thinking and my experience to challenge that. If I want a body that is in good shape, the first place to begin is my thinking.

A colleague of my husband’s was a top sports psychiatrist for the Olympic Track Team. He once told a group of coaches at a conference my husband attended how important it was for their athletes to feel confident, ready, hopeful. My husband asked him after the talk how he could expect that. How can you tell someone to feel a certain way? This man looked at my husband and said, “Chuck, everyone knows that your feelings are a product of your thoughts.”

So, if I'm feeling badly about my body, or my work, or a relationship, the answer is not out there, it's inside. In my own thinking.

The Stoic philosopher, Seneca, has some useful ideas on the body. He says to exercise it once a day, vigorously, and then get on with more important things.

Today I walked farther, as far as the barn. It is a lovely thing; symmetrical, beautiful, useful. It doesn’t have any animals living in it anymore, but it still has value. The thought and effort that went into building it, and all the ways it has been useful, remain, though in changed forms.

Vaclav Havel said that “Consciousness precedes being, and not the other way around . . .” He also maintained that “Material reality is not the fundamental driving force in human history . . . spiritual reality is." (David Brooks, The Second Mountain p. 205)

So, I will focus on the larger body of my life, perhaps on the ways I can still be useful, and on the big question of spiritual reality.

And I will see my old barn tomorrow morning.

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