An Introductory Shamble

Shambling not strutting. Strutting is what you do when you're young and foolish, with your whole life ahead of you; you've got somewhere to strut to. Horizons may be false but your youthful optimism struts you on to the next one regardless.

As you get older strut turns to shamble. The road ahead becomes less certain, and you're more wary of the potholes that lie in wait, potholes gleefully anticipating pratfalls. You shuffle along, your gate is shorter, feet scraping the dusty path; there's not so far to go now. The once glowing horizon is now dimmed by past disappointments and expectations that are no longer great. That final horizon, the one your youthful self hardly had time to contemplate, now looms larger and is not as easy to ignore; each arthritic and rhuematic twinge redirects your wavering attention to it.

Shuffling - shambling is part of the bodies self anaesthetizing as we approach our final horizon. It may even be an edge-of-the-world pothole, that mother of all potholes into which we hurl ourselves, shouting “Geronimo”, if we still have strength and will enough to do so.

By the way. I am one of the shamblers.