Walk

As I approached the gates to the O-Train station I was worried I was on the wrong side of the tracks again meaning I would have to book it down the stairs and back up the others side to make sure I was taking the Line 1 train due in one minute towards Blair Station rather than the Line 1 to Tunney's Pasture. 

But then this concern became irrelevant when I was jolted by the harsh tone of the PRESTO-card machine: "payment declined, balance -$0.37," the screen said.

"If only I had put $20 on my card when I loaded it the last time," I thought to myself "And why didn't I pay more attention to the time so I didn't have to pay for the train twice the last time I used it?" 

I began to shift my frustration away from myself, "Wait, actually, it's not my fault, the trains should be free to ride, it's called public transit afterall!" So I decided to walk.

​​It was a nice sunny day out, 5 degrees Celsius, and Google Maps told me it would be a 54 minute walk to the store I was trying to get to. After a few minutes along the path parallel to the rails, I was questioning and doubting the strong anti-car beliefs I had developed over the years:

"If only I wasn't so stubborn and introspective and indecisive I could've lived a 'normal' life in which by now I would've saved up enough money allow myself to afford buying a car and get where I want to go quickly and comfortably.  Am I just invested in this anti-car way of thinking because I wrote that one article advocating for people to destroy their cars and use transit instead that got published in the newspaper and is still available to the public online? Are my beliefs just coming from pride and laziness?"

"No," I assured myself, "If I had a car I would have to be paying for gas and maintenance and licensing which I would hate doing and despite the perceived convenience cars just contribute to individualism that leads to congestion, road rage, and city planning that makes everyone worse off." I kept walking.

I returned my attention to the scene in front of me, the sunlight radiating from the bright blue sky reflecting off the snow along the path and the frozen Rideau River as I crossed the bridge over it, with the boundary of the city skyline in my left peripheral, and the trees, grass and Hurdman Station in my view ahead. 

Because I had earbuds in I didn't hear the bike approaching me from behind so it startled me when the man on the winter fat-bike whizzed by me on my left. This got me thinking again though:

"If only I had brought my bike along with me from back home I could be sailing along this trail as well. I could get to the store faster than anyone could get there by car or transit. I need to buy a bike or pay to get mine shipped here!"

But this grand idea was soon thwarted when I remembered that I currently didn't even have enough funds to load my PRESTO card. I continued walking.

"If Terry Fox could run halfway across Canada with an artificial leg why can't I walk three and a half kilometeres without complaining? I have two legs that work well, why would I ever need anything in addition to this?"

It's not like Terry Fox was super-human. He was very sick before he started his Marathon of Hope in 1980, he had cancer, underwent chemotherapy, and had a limb amputated only three years prior to running a marathon a day for 143 days. 

Yes, Terry Fox's body may have been "privileged" in some ways such as genetics, and being an athlete prior to his cancer diagnosis, and he had a male body which meant he likely had a higher of testosterone than he would've if he had been born with a female body but all this played a very little part in what he did even if the cancer didn't cancel out these "privileges". 

It was his determination, his perseverance, his inspiration, his will that allowed him to run the 5,373 kilometers from St. John's to Thunder Bay. 

Could someone with a female body do what he did? Maybe not in the same time or with the same daily mileage but the determination, perseverance, inspiration, and will didn't come from his testosterone or his body. 

That's a scary thought isn't it? We like to think our bodies predetermine what we are able to do, we like to be able to blame something.  

I find it silly that people say things like "be a man" or "be lady-like." I think what these people are really trying to say is "display more stereotypically masculine traits" or "display more stereotypically feminine traits" (Brene Brown's research provides a good description of these stereotypical traits as I mentioned in Nor). 

But I think it's redundant to tell a person with a male body to "be a man" because by definition if they a male body they are a man or to tell a person with a female body to "be lady-like" because by definition if they have a female body they are not just like a lady they are one (or at least their bodies are a man or a lady/woman but not the essence of their being).

​So if you think it would help someone if they controlled their emotions more or focused more on working on projects rather than their self-image (stereotypically masculine behaviours), then tell them specifically to do these things, don't tell them to "be a man." 

Or if you think it would help someone to act more friendly and polite, and put more effort into making themselves look clean and neat (stereotypically feminine behaviours), then tell them specifically to do these things, don't tell them to "be lady-like." 

And these helpful suggestions can be directed towards people who have either a male or female body, our world needs to move beyond the idea that one's body parts and hormones should determine the ways one can behave: we're all human. 

Either/or, binary, fundamentalist thinking is unhealthy for everyone in my opinion (from my experience having this kind of thinking in my life many times about different things).

I realize this was a big digression so to succinctly explain my point with all this Terry Fox and gender stuff: stop complaining and walk. 

As the famous teacher, and supposedly ultimate divine being Jesus was recorded to have said to a man who had been laying ill in the same spot for 38 years, in John 5:8: "stand up, take your mat, and walk."

And this is what I told myself as I walked along the road in the industrial, automobile-centric part of the city with big box stores and parking lots filling my sight-line.  The sidewalk on the side of the road soon ended so I had wait about a minute for a clearing until I could briskly and cautiously make the crossing to the other side. 

Just as I made it to the other side a young woman wearing a backpack passed by me. 

"Crap," I thought to myself "I hate walking behind people."

​I like to walk at full-speed if I'm trying to get somewhere but it's always awkward when the person who's walking ahead of you's full-speed is slightly slower than your own. If you want to continue walking at your own speed, not only do you have to pass them but you have to pass them with determination and an unnaturally quick step. 

So I slowed down a bit but then I started worrying about what kind of distance there was between me and the woman. 

"What if she or someone driving by thinks I'm following her or stalking her?" I stopped and looked at my phone for about a minute pretending I had a message to respond to. But after starting to walk again I caught up to her within a couple minutes. I decided to cross to the other side again and just walk along the driveway of a truck loading station of a warehouse separated from the street by a snowbank. 

15 more minutes of this on a straight road, the hum of engines and mufflers mixed in with some angry honks providing some extra instrumental parts to the tunes I was listening to, and then I finally arrived at my destination.

I believed I had a $12.50 balance on my Canada Post Cash Passport Mastercard, the only payment card I had with me, which I thought was enough to pay for the online pickup order I had placed. The cashier gave me my bag of grocery items when I told her my name and proceeded to hand me the card machine to pay. I tried tapping my card: "declined." 

She told me to try inserting the card instead. I knew the four numbers in the four-number PIN but I wasn't quite sure the order of the numbers. After two failed attempts, I got the PIN right but again the machine made a low-pitch beeping noise and told me: "declined." 

I checked the balance of the card on my phone: $12.09 and the order came to $12.27. I asked her to take the navy beans off the order and then proceeded to try tapping the card again: "declined." 

I inserted the card and messed up the PIN 3 times. "You can come back later if you want," the cashier 'compassionately' suggested to me. "Sure," I replied.

So back I went along the dull road filled with cars and trucks driving by at 60 km/hr, lined with gas stations, and warehouses, a gloomy setting that only a country with a capitalist economy can produce.  

A car cut me off as I took a step on the sidewalk perpendicular to the entrance of an Esso station. 

"Are you f***ing kidding me?" I thought to myself as I prepared to throw my hands up in disgust or flip the driver the bird, "If you're going to drive around in a big contraption made with metal, while you sit on your heated seat and hum along to the songs on the radio, at least have the courtesy to honk before you pull a manouever like that!" 

But I restrained myself and I laughed.

Walking allows you to experience life. Walking allows you to notice things. Walking gives you stories. Walking allows you to reflect on the bigger questions you have in life. 

And you don't have to fill up your tank with an expensive, non-renewable, carbon-omitting substance to do it.