“Get to” vs. “got to,”(at a fast clip)

After no exercise for two weeks (due to sickness making its rounds in the house) I walked fast for thirty minutes on the treadmill today.

It was awesome.

Ramped up on appreciation from a morning writing exercise I do, I hopped on that baby with enthusiasm.

Woo-hoo! Look at me go! Feels so good to move!

I love my body. Today I’m not thinking about that roll around my middle. I’m thinking about legs that work. Feet that feel good. My mom says I started walking by 8 months. What good feet I have, taking me all these steps for 42 years.

The human body. So cool? How is it I’m walking on this treadmill? How is it I’m standing upright at all? I think of skeletons hanging in biology classrooms. They’d just collapse if let off their hooks, but living, breathing bodies? We get to stand! We get to walk! Spectacular life energy holds us up. How the hell? Woo-hoo!

Scratching an itch on my cheek. How did I do that? I didn’t put out a memo and request my hand reach up to my face. I didn’t have to pay for it. I didn’t even have to think about it. I itched. I scratched. End of story.

I try this several times. Hands raised in the air.

Back down.

All while walking at a fast clip.

Up again! Hands in the air. Wave ’em like you just don’t care!

A miracle!

Seth walks in the room, ready to talk my ear off about Lego.

“SETH!” I greet him,

“HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE AS GORGEOUS AS BRAD PITT? BRAD FROM A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT, NOT ANGELINA’S BRAD WITH THE DIRTY LOOKING SCRAGGLY BEARD?”

Without a word, Seth slowly backs out of the room.

I’m loving this treadmill, this walking.

On the wall to my right hangs a picture I bought, during a trip to West Virginia; the last time I saw my friend Clarissa. The last time I’ll ever see her.

“If I could.”

She held it for me as I dug my wallet out of my purse to pay for it. I reach out now with my miraculously functioning arm, and still walking, I touch it. She touched it, and now I touch it and some of our molecules mix.

Step, step, step.

I think of a dinner on the Caribbean cruise I went on last year, where a new friend corrected several of us at the table…urging us to begin saying, “I get to….(insert anything) instead of saying, “I’ve got to…..(insert anything). Such a small shift in words. Such a huge shift in energy.

I have a highly complex, beautifully functioning body.

I’m so lucky I “get” to do the treadmill.

I get to be alive.

I get to do countless wonderful things.

I get it.