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| Power Style Wellness Connections |
Stop. Then, Go!
By Mary Cartledgehayes
I went to see the new baby a few weeks ago. He’s a cute little fellow, bright-eyed and
enchanted with the world around him. Those of us who gathered to look into his
nursery…
Well, you'd have thought we were at a family reunion the way we nudged each other and
chuckled and pointed out the perfect conformation of his ears and the sweet way in
which he’d wander away from Mikki, his mother; scamper back to her for a moment’s
reassurance, and then venture afield again, tempted by the smell of new hay or the sight
of a mallard duck strolling past.
For once, it was the adults, rather than the children, who were nearly out of their minds
with excitement at the Louisville Zoo. Or maybe that was just me. Ever since March 18,
the day he was born, I’d longed to see Scotty, the zoo’s new African elephant. One thing
after another prevented my getting there: a nephew’s out-of-state wedding, the Memorial
Day holiday, the call of my laptop, and the temptation of an art festival. I began to fear
that Scotty would be grown before I got to see him. Indeed, he’d gained more than a
hundred pounds by the time I visited the zoo. It’s okay though. In elephant years, he’s
still an infant.
Scotty isn’t the only treasure at the zoo. Fascinated by camels, I was delighted to find two
of them kneeling, face to face, under a tree. The giraffes also wowed me. Seeing one
munch a leaf on a high branch made my synapses sparkle the way I imagine they would
if I saw a water tower hitch up its skirts and lean down to peek in through a skyscraper
window. Later, I stood under the oldest oak tree in Louisville and watched sunlight play
tag with its leaves. Then I bought an ice cream cone to keep up my strength as I tracked
down Louie, the zoo’s white alligator, who, it turns out, appears luminescent. If I didn’t
know better, I’d swear he glows in the dark.
And to think how easily I could have missed it all: the heat of the day, the sight of clouds
billowing in the spring sky, the cold luxury of the soft ice cream, the communal pleasure,
the personal delight at being exactly where I wanted to be doing exactly what I wanted to
do.
Adulthood, through no fault of its own, is a trap for some of us. We are such busy
people. I’ve wondered, often, why this is the case, and why now. Our ancestors worked
from sun up to sundown and beyond. By day and evening, they plowed fields, hauled
water, chopped wood, stitched clothing, wrote letters back East, tanned hides, tramped
the forest hunting meat for the table, skinned, sheared, plucked, fried, boiled, baked.
Nights brought the moans of birthing cows and the shrieks of teething babies, the foxes
haunting the henhouse, the coyotes circling the barn. And worry. Worry in the night
about droughts, hail, floods; the aching tooth that might require primitive dentistry; the
abscessing wound on a child’s foot that, before antibiotics, often meant death.
Compared to those folks, our days are our own. Or they would be, perhaps, if we weren’t
citizens of our time. The knowledge explosion — the great surge of science that began
during World War II — has saved many lives and extended most, but it also consumes
us. I don’t know about your house, but at mine there’s always another phone to answer,
text messages to scan, websites to explore, newspapers to read, or books to hunker
down with. Friends and family are scattered across the continent — actually, across the
world, with my aunt in England and cousins in Cornwall and Italy. We keep the hearth
fires burning, in spite of the obstacle of distance. And that’s wonderful, right up to the
moment that I measure those things against watching one camel nudge another as if to
say “Don’t look now but you’re on Candid Camera” or of seeing a baby elephant stretch
his trunk toward a beckoning crowd just beyond his reach.
What does it profit us to gain the advantages of an exceptional city in an amazing
country in an astonishing century if we lose our souls? Souls are funny things, you know.
Like infants, they are not so much delicate as in need of attention and stimulation. And I
don’t mean intellectual stimulation. I mean life-force stimulation, the kind that takes us
away from the demands, good or bad, of this moment; the kind that sends our synapses
reeling and our souls waltzing at a sight, sound, smell, taste that we’ve never before
experienced; the kind that lets us see the stranger beside us is really an old friend — old
in the ways of longing to see an elephant, old in the ways of knowing that opportunities
like this are rare and that sometimes, for the world’s sake, you have to tear yourself
away from the temptation of life’s important tasks and instead, do something of benefit to
nobody but your very own self.
By Mary Cartledgehayes
I went to see the new baby a few weeks ago. He’s a cute little fellow, bright-eyed and
enchanted with the world around him. Those of us who gathered to look into his
nursery…
Well, you'd have thought we were at a family reunion the way we nudged each other and
chuckled and pointed out the perfect conformation of his ears and the sweet way in
which he’d wander away from Mikki, his mother; scamper back to her for a moment’s
reassurance, and then venture afield again, tempted by the smell of new hay or the sight
of a mallard duck strolling past.
For once, it was the adults, rather than the children, who were nearly out of their minds
with excitement at the Louisville Zoo. Or maybe that was just me. Ever since March 18,
the day he was born, I’d longed to see Scotty, the zoo’s new African elephant. One thing
after another prevented my getting there: a nephew’s out-of-state wedding, the Memorial
Day holiday, the call of my laptop, and the temptation of an art festival. I began to fear
that Scotty would be grown before I got to see him. Indeed, he’d gained more than a
hundred pounds by the time I visited the zoo. It’s okay though. In elephant years, he’s
still an infant.
Scotty isn’t the only treasure at the zoo. Fascinated by camels, I was delighted to find two
of them kneeling, face to face, under a tree. The giraffes also wowed me. Seeing one
munch a leaf on a high branch made my synapses sparkle the way I imagine they would
if I saw a water tower hitch up its skirts and lean down to peek in through a skyscraper
window. Later, I stood under the oldest oak tree in Louisville and watched sunlight play
tag with its leaves. Then I bought an ice cream cone to keep up my strength as I tracked
down Louie, the zoo’s white alligator, who, it turns out, appears luminescent. If I didn’t
know better, I’d swear he glows in the dark.
And to think how easily I could have missed it all: the heat of the day, the sight of clouds
billowing in the spring sky, the cold luxury of the soft ice cream, the communal pleasure,
the personal delight at being exactly where I wanted to be doing exactly what I wanted to
do.
Adulthood, through no fault of its own, is a trap for some of us. We are such busy
people. I’ve wondered, often, why this is the case, and why now. Our ancestors worked
from sun up to sundown and beyond. By day and evening, they plowed fields, hauled
water, chopped wood, stitched clothing, wrote letters back East, tanned hides, tramped
the forest hunting meat for the table, skinned, sheared, plucked, fried, boiled, baked.
Nights brought the moans of birthing cows and the shrieks of teething babies, the foxes
haunting the henhouse, the coyotes circling the barn. And worry. Worry in the night
about droughts, hail, floods; the aching tooth that might require primitive dentistry; the
abscessing wound on a child’s foot that, before antibiotics, often meant death.
Compared to those folks, our days are our own. Or they would be, perhaps, if we weren’t
citizens of our time. The knowledge explosion — the great surge of science that began
during World War II — has saved many lives and extended most, but it also consumes
us. I don’t know about your house, but at mine there’s always another phone to answer,
text messages to scan, websites to explore, newspapers to read, or books to hunker
down with. Friends and family are scattered across the continent — actually, across the
world, with my aunt in England and cousins in Cornwall and Italy. We keep the hearth
fires burning, in spite of the obstacle of distance. And that’s wonderful, right up to the
moment that I measure those things against watching one camel nudge another as if to
say “Don’t look now but you’re on Candid Camera” or of seeing a baby elephant stretch
his trunk toward a beckoning crowd just beyond his reach.
What does it profit us to gain the advantages of an exceptional city in an amazing
country in an astonishing century if we lose our souls? Souls are funny things, you know.
Like infants, they are not so much delicate as in need of attention and stimulation. And I
don’t mean intellectual stimulation. I mean life-force stimulation, the kind that takes us
away from the demands, good or bad, of this moment; the kind that sends our synapses
reeling and our souls waltzing at a sight, sound, smell, taste that we’ve never before
experienced; the kind that lets us see the stranger beside us is really an old friend — old
in the ways of longing to see an elephant, old in the ways of knowing that opportunities
like this are rare and that sometimes, for the world’s sake, you have to tear yourself
away from the temptation of life’s important tasks and instead, do something of benefit to
nobody but your very own self.