Walking together

As I have mentioned previously, I like to walk. As a teenager I often walked down to the village of Dryden from where I lived. It must have been more than 5 miles round-trip. As Russ and I have gotten older and are now empty-nesters, we usually walk together for exercise every day. I am a little taller than he is, mostly in the legs. My legs are 3 inches longer than his. As a result, walking together has required some adjustment. What is a comfortable stride for me makes him feel constantly dragged along. Since he can't lengthen his stride any more than he has, if I want to walk alongside him, I have to shorten my steps. It's not a big deal for me, but it's important in bringing us together more harmoniously.
My oldest grandson has legs like his father. His father is quite tall, in fact, about a foot taller than my daughter. Tanis has often gotten in trouble as we have walked places- whether in a store, on the sidewalk, or sightseeing. He tends to get way ahead. Due to his young age, he didn't always pay attention to where he was going and sometimes didn't even know the way. So we would have to call out to him to stop and wait, reminding him that he didn't know where to turn. I don't think he was trying to compete in any way. I think the combination of his youthful exhuberance (I'm excited because we're going somewhere!) and his lengthy stride just got him way ahead. You can see in this picture that he is definitely the tallest of most of his cousins. The cousin next to him is only about a year younger.
My sisters walk, too. My younger sister, Deedie, could compete with just about any woman our age when it comes to fitness. I enjoy being able to walk with her when I get the chance. Even though I'm just a little taller, she is so energetic that I have to really work at it to keep up with her! When she walks to exercise, she puts her all into it.

We all walk at our own pace. If we want to walk alone, it doesn't matter what our pace is. But if we want to be with someone, anyone, we might have to compromise a little in some way to match strides. It requires effort to be "with" someone, even if it's someone we really love. We can choose to willingly match strides, or we can resent it and make the walking miserable, or we can refuse to alter our stride and go off alone.