A steady gait


What is a path but a collection of footsteps?


The determined and plodding gait, the refusal to toss aside our convictions ... a dog knows that life is best dealt with directly and without trickery.
What is the adage? The old dog can't be taught new tricks? My dear, the old dog doesn't want to learn them ...

The old dog, and this old dog in particular, notes two events from the week just behind us.

Pope John Paul Ii left us, and there is sadness and reflection in his wake. Yet he left on his own terms, having discovered that after a long life of reflection, philosophy and fearlessness that he had lessons yet to learn and to teach.
His old age and illness became yet another of his demonstrations of the noble life. We all have such nobility but too often we shun it, preferring to look the other way at infirmity and mortality.

Old dogs, again, know that age is just another step in the walk.

I am an old dog now, and tremble and creak when I first get up. But I know how to pace myself, and no one is my better when it comes to knowing the halfway mark of the daily walk. Plodding is what gets you there.

Only an old dog knows the trick of time.

Plodding and time? Britain's Prince Charles ... there is no better example of why Britain has survived and endured when so many empires and countries have fallen by the wayside. Endurance and the boring insistence on convictions. When our legs creak and our bones ache, it is conviction that will carry us on the final leg of our journey.
Ask the old dogs. We know.
--Nigel

Posted: Mon - April 11, 2005 at 06:51 PM          

©