A Simple Thing Like Walking

“Wellness Works NW encourages and motivates older adults to become more responsible for their own personal wellness by linking them with wellness component programs and resources.

Note there are lots of spaces between paragraphs that ye not so old computer is putting in there. Scroll to very end of the article, thanks.  it will say  The End.

We organize and conduct a Senior Wellness Conference for Senior Centers, with an emphasis on prevention that addresses four major wellness components: Movement, Nutrition, Fall Prevention and Memory Wellness. Participants will be provided an "action plan" model that will allow them to address a community wellness need for implementation. Conference coalition partners will provide necessary expertise and support to assist in action plan success. Follow up visits and linking centers with similar plans enhances the proliferation and exchange of coalition partner resources.”

These words written by Steven Behr, Sr. from Washington State where he lives and practices being a wellness educator. That is one who promotes healthy lifestyles and especially to seniors. He lectures them on how to keep healthy for the now period time in their lives and he encourages them to go out and dance and mainly to keep active and fit so they live to be in their nineties.

He will be quoting some of Elita’s thoughts from her articles and stories on life, ballroom dancing, and the quest for good health. Ballroom dancing is considered a good activity to keep us all living well. We could write down all the things and activities that we are really excellent in.

There is a saying “do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” There are many things I cannot do, I cannot play golf, and I can hardly remember all the piano playing I did as a teen, because I did not keep up with it. I can go to our baby grand piano in my living room and dust off the keys and bench and the piano itself. I cannot place my fingers where they belong or even read music sheets anymore. That is fine; I can do many other things, just as well, as playing the piano.

I can ballroom dance, I can write articles, I can be a good person, I can be a great grandmother someday, I am a great- great aunt and that is an accomplishment that was given to me by my great niece when she had two children in the last three years. I can write rhyming poetry, I can cook, I can speak well. So whatever you can do, from what you have achieved now or in the past, that is called being skilled and proficient.

I do not let things I cannot do interfere with what I can do and do in an excellent manner.

A wellness educator is one who promotes and teaches healthy living styles. Steven Behr, my friend in Washington State was giving one of his classes and he asked a lady why she no longer danced. She replied “I cannot because I am sixty-five now.” She thought that when she hit the magic old age number that she no longer would be able to dance again. Numbers are that and sixty-five is still a great age, where you can do lots of things. I know a man whose mother is going to be ninety-two and she is looking forward to two of her grandchildren’s wedding in the coming weeks of September. Last year when her other granddaughter got married and another one was engaged at the same time, she went and bought a different dress to wear for the second wedding. Now her grandson is getting married and she has a third dress. She is still in the mode to look beautiful at her grandchildren’s weddings and does not want to wear the same one for each occasion. That is a marvelous attitude for a woman of this age. She is going out and going to look lovely for each of their weddings.

The sixty-five year old mentioned above should have been with me in 1983 when women in their eighties were doing ballroom dance competitions in Florida with their teachers, winning awards, compliments and huge trophies. One of them danced with her grandson and she was eighty and he was twenty-four and they danced as an amateur couple. They took lessons together, practiced together and won trophies together. They were a darling couple and she was as proud of him, as he was proud to be dancing three dances with his Granny as he called her. They were the stars of the evening. I was forty-nine then and I marveled at their spirit, the quality of their dancing and the light shining in their eyes.

I am walking a bit better due to knee exercises, doing my stationary bike three miles every day, seven days a week. I am not sitting around worrying about what I cannot do; I am going to ballroom dance at a dance in a few months. Even if I only dance three dances in the two hours I am there at the dance studio; I will be a winner of the first order. I will have accomplished my dream of when I started the physical   therapy and next I will try walking a bit in a mall. Maybe, I will only walk the distance of five stores, but that will be better than not walking there at all. It will be a milestone, because now when I go to a mall, I stay in one store only. So walking past or in and out of five stores, will be a nice journey back to walking better.

A simple thing like walking when it is hard for you and an obstacle too; can be on a wish list. My list as I have mentioned before is to dance again at a dance studio on a Sunday afternoon, to be able to move around the floor like competent dancers do, to dance in a competition here in Baltimore next June and thirdly, to walk in a mall and stroll and view things and even to buy something. Now I buy most everything through the internet. Sometimes I have to return them, my husband does it at the store if a local one is here or else I have to return them via UPS and that costs money. It will be more fun to buy something in person than from a photo on a screen. The screen buying is OK if you cannot walk to a store; it will be a revelation to me and I will be excited to do that, to buy in person.

I had a fine day a few weeks ago when I had to go to Walmart to complain in person about a picture I had made into what they now call a canvas. They take a copy of your picture and they transfer it to canvas and somehow it looks like a real painting.Walmart forgot to frame it like they said on the order blank. I spoke to five people, pressed about 100 buttons on the phone to get to five people who would not give me a credit for no frame. They wanted me to return it at my expense and I said no. So I conferred with someone in person at the huge store and after walking what seemed like miles in the large store, we went to eat a light supper and then we went to a Michaels Craft Store and they framed it for me on sight .I even stood for about forty-five minutes while they did their work in framing the picture. Oh how proud I was and I was exhausted, but I felt I had attained a great accomplishment.

As Steven Behr, my dear email friend from Steilacoom, Washington does in his profession; he promotes healthy attitudes, healthy lifestyles and encouragement to dance and do other hobbies, that is what I am subscribing to.

He is going to use two of my current articles on The Patch, where I inspire people to do all these things, now that I am encouraging me to do, in his classroom, similar to learning tools used in school of writings by experts on the subjects. My words will be read to them for inspiration, for that I am indeed humble at this seventy-ninth year of my senior life.

So I am honored to have my words used to inspire others to do the things I write about and now I am emboldened, heartening and inspiring Elita to do what she tells others to do.

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with all the things you can do, because you are able to set your mind, whatever age you are NOW and you can do it A good thought I read on the internet is “the battle of life is in most cases fought uphill and to win it with a struggle is perhaps to win it with honor.”

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