Why I love my dirty shoes.

She sat, white-haired and bundled in her blue sweater reading her book that stated the main character had taken off to somewhere incredible. And on this gorgeous September morning, it couldn’t have felt like a more romantic notion. The sun flittered through the trees like water around skin in the ocean for the first time.

“So why just read about taking off?” I wondered to myself. “Why not just go?” and I thought about all the reasons we tell ourselves as humans: “I can’t because of xyz obligations etc” which just seems so sad to me. Books are lovely and a temporary escape, but at some point you have to go. You have to get out there and explore the world you have been brought into. You have only that obligation.

Life will pass quickly, we have all heard this. It does. For some it passes faster than for others I believe. For this woman, all wrapped up in her book, her sweater only gave temporary warmth and her book only gave a momentary escape. Now she sits in a coffee shop thinking the thoughts of those who haven’t lived: “What if I had…?” and “What would have been”, cursing herself inwardly to the point she can no longer smile at a stranger (me) sitting next to her.

Her perfectly white tennis shoes, perfectly tied laces had not experienced the adventures and the happiness of a fleeting moment that my worn shoes and frayed jeans had. “How sad” I thought to myself. And suddenly I was happy at the holes and fraying I had once cursed, for they meant crucial life explorations I had captured.