I have to religiously do this twenty
minutes non- stop, slow- paced jogging. At midlife, the experts warned us about
the risk of getting those deadly cardiovascular diseases, which are common
among many Forty-agers like me. I
considered this daily exercise as my sacred duty to keep this body going until
its eventual expiration.
The mechanical pounding of feet in these rubberized runners' lanes is a metaphor reminder of my own mortality. I jog with this sole aim of trying to extend this diminishing lifespan. I am reminded of my grandfather who died at the full age of ninety-five and I noted that he was not a jogging enthusiast. He was not a sports' fanatic. At the last ten years of his life, he gained so much weight. Those later years, he was happy sitting on his favorite reclined chair, listening to radio commentators discussing local politics. But, when I inspected his past youthful lifestyle, I found out that he was industrious through hard labor, he had worked in his vast farm aided by able farm animals and he was contented on healthful fish diet, and these could be some remarkable attributes of his unusual long life.
If I could measure the distance and the number of pacing that my jogging fanaticism has accumulated for the last 25 years, I do not know how far it could bring me. I only observed that my metabolism is still working remarkably well. I still have an unchanged weight for the last 13 years, which means I did not gained or lost any. There are some who skip this indispensable discipline because of overwhelming adult responsibilities. Others only remember this healthy regiments whenever their family doctors required them. They only step into physical exercises as a reactionary mode to some uncomfortable chest pain or the growing pot belly that portrayed more men like a perpetual prego, waiting for surgical incision by some skillful hands of obstetricians.
I still jog. We are progenies of Mercury, with wings on feet, perpetually running or perhaps jogging wherever we are.