Learning to Walk Again

A month or so ago my lovely wife and daughter bought me a new pair of Frye boots exactly like the ones in the picture. I bought my first and only other pair in the summer of 1978 at the end of my first year as an American. It seemed a fitting thing to do. I even bought a pair of spurs that fit on them. I still have that 34 year old pair of boots, and the spurs, but my son Andrew has taken to the boots so I find myself bootless, and
perhaps, unhorsed.

I wore those wonderful boots today for the first time and found that I needed to learn how to walk all over again. At first, I was overly conscious of the way the heel hits the ground first and the slap of the top of the boot on the back of my leg. It took a time but by the end of the day I found I had adjusted my gait to a more confident stride to accommodate the awkwardness of the heel and calf issues. I was no longer shuffling along; I was striding with a purpose or moseying with a leisurely lope.

We learn to walk again each time we fall or get knocked down. Get right back on when you fall off is a well worn piece of advice that may hold true for horses and bicycles but seldom seems to work in the less physical aspects of one's life. A failed plan, a bad review, unfair treatment, a misread assessment are all things that can stop us in our tracks requiring a slow process of repairing or rebuilding one or more aspects of one's being. We need to take stock and decide where fault, if any, lies, and then move on with a strategy to make things as they were, put on a patch or, hopefully, improve the situation.

Mistakes, whether they be as a result of our own actions or those of others, are sites for learning and a College is one of the best places to learn how to learn from one's mistakes because it is a community where everyone cares about the welfare of the individual.

It seems that there are many places at different stages in our lives where we have to learn to walk all over again.