Q: I would like to help my husband but I am not sure what I can do that might be to his advantage.
A few weeks ago, he decided to get himself into a walking routine. He also encouraged other people in our community to do the same.
He booked an idle school gymnasium and three times a week went over with his running shoes and CD player and spent the better part of the morning walking around the gym.
He invited other people to join him but they never did. On occasion, one of our neighbours would stop in when my husband was in the gym but that seldom amounted to anything more than a short stint before that other person was gone.
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I think what my husband is trying to do is admirable and I would like to support him but I am not sure what I can do.
A: You are right; what your husband is trying to do is admirable. He deserves all the credit you can muster for him, or just anything to keep him on track with his determination to build regular walks into his routines.
If he does that, he will come off a bit healthier than he was before he started and if he does that, he will by example open the doors for some of your neighbours to join him for his regular walks.
Part of the problem your husband is facing is that he is trying to use an old gymnasium for his walking program.
I am not sure about the gym in your town, but gyms that I have seen elsewhere are not attractive.
Your neighbours are not likely to join your husband in a facility that some school district has already designated as old and useless.
Studies show that people walk where they find themselves in settings that are both exciting and beautiful. Apparently, the beauty of the walk energizes them.
People are also more inclined to walk when they can breathe in fresh air, even if it is disrupted with the occasional thunderstorm or below-zero weather. All that is important is that it is fresh air.
You are not likely to find fresh air or beauty in an old gymnasium but you can find them in your community.
Why don’t you and your husband look around? My guess is that somewhere in your community there is a walk, outside, under the beauty of our prairie skies.
If you are having trouble finding that beauty, try reading Phillip Grover’s Over Prairie Trails.
It is a wonderful celebration of our prairie landscape and above all else a gentle reminder of the beauty in the soil we sometimes fail to see.
People walk for a reason. Usually that reason must be more specific to them than walking to lose weight or walking to get healthy.
Some walk so they can record an extra three kilometres daily on their pedometers. Others walk by the watch, committing themselves to an hour three times weekly.
Your neighbours might walk to Grandma’s house to join her for a tea biscuit and tea every second morning. They could walk to say “hi” to their friends who are also walking. They might walk to exercise their dogs and they will walk to get away from annoying cellphones or the anxieties of raising their families.
Whatever their reasons for walking, they are their own.
You can’t bestow reasons on them or force them to walk for your reasons.
If you and your husband take regular walks on a trail while enjoying the beauty of the land and do so for your own reasons, your neighbours will find purpose for themselves in your path and in time they will join you.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
