ENOUGH WALKING

I was walking in Berkeley and I sat down at the Pane Italiano Qualita to have a sandwich; this one, a bit heavy on the tomato, decidedly light on the prosciutto.

And as I was sitting there, two people came in – an old lady and a middle-aged man, mother and son I’m pretty sure, though I couldn’t prove that. 

And the old lady said to her son, “I’m not walking as well as I used to.”

And the son said, “OK, but are you walking enough?”

This raised some questions.  Obviously there’s a basic one about what does it mean to walk “well” – I suppose painlessly, without getting tired, without any danger of falling over.  Also perhaps a question of just how well she used to walk.

And then the question of how much walking is enough, a matter of quantity versus quality.  Some of us tend to think that walking is in itself a virtue, but maybe the son was suggesting that it only became a virtue after you'd done a certain amount of it. Or maybe he was suggesting that if she did more of it she’d become "better" at it. 

The conversation didn’t get that far.  The old lady didn’t bother to answer him.  Maybe it wasn’t really a question.