My walking is … Well, it’s not sexy. Not even remotely.
It’s not elegant, it’s not straight, it’s not relaxed. It doesn’t go in a straight line, and it certainly doesn’t go in sync.
I waddle.
And you can’t really see that in a picture. You see it when you spot me in the middle of a bar, charging towards the bathroom.
It’s not the walk I had 15 years ago, when I casually dragged my feet through the sand in my brand-new Pumas, perhaps half a size too big.
It’s not the walk little Darja took for granted.
“I can’t be bothered to walk,” I used to complain to my parents, who dragged me up a hill every Sunday.
Up a hill!
I don’t go hiking anymore, so I am especially grateful to my parents for all those forced childhood hikes.
Every now and then I challenge myself to tackle a hill anyway. I push myself beyond my limits, and then suffer for another three days after the adventure.
Happy, though.
Happy that I managed those 50 metres of elevation gain.
Don’t take walking for granted.
Appreciate every step.
I envy you for it.
That physical lightness you feel when you set off into your day.
The fact that you can casually wander from one shop to another in a shopping centre, checking out what’s new on the shelves.
That you can walk through town eating an ice cream, lazily watching passers-by through your sunglasses.
That you can hop on your bike when you realise you’d be too slow on foot, or jump on your scooter and wave at a friend on the other side of the square as you whizz past.
Don’t take it for granted. Don’t take that ability for granted.
Just as I don’t take for granted the fact that, despite stumbling around in flat-soled shoes, I can still walk.
I browse the shelves online or push a squeaky shopping trolley carefully through the supermarket.
I eat my ice cream sitting on the edge of the pavement in a car park.
And when I wave at a friend, I stop and lean against …
A pole.
That works, too.
I always think of this comic, where the driver dreams of having a helicopter. The cyclist dreams of being able to afford a car. The pedestrian who is in a hurry dreams of having a bicycle.
And the person in a wheelchair dreams of …
Walking.
It is designed to tug at your heartstrings. To wake you up. To shake your brain around a little.
Of course it makes you think.
The slogan “Nothing should be taken for granted” can very quickly become an empty cliché if you don’t actually stop and think about what it means.
After all, even a person in a wheelchair has plenty of things they shouldn’t take for granted:
- the personal assistant who helps them get out of bed every morning,
- the mother who brings groceries home from the shop,
- the friend who keeps them company in the evenings,
- and, above all, the will to live. The fact that they are alive.
Despite the disability that makes them face more obstacles than a healthy person might ever imagine, they are still important to someone.
They have found something they are good at, something that makes them feel useful to themselves, something through which they can contribute their own value to society.
I’m not just talking out of thin air.
I’m speaking from experience.
From thoughts I had already as a child, when I would look through the bars of the windows at the Paediatric Clinic on Vrazov trg and watch people walking down the street.
From up there, those people in the distance looked incredibly lucky to me.
They could walk wherever they needed to go.
They were free.
What about you?
Is there something you take for granted that someone else might consider a privilege?