He ran down the heart of the old midway, where the weight guessers, fortune-tellers, and dancing gypsies had once worked. He lowered his chin and held his arms out like a glider, and every few steps he would jump, the way children do, hoping running would turn into flying. It might have seemed ridiculous to anyone watching, this white-haired maintenance worker, all alone, making like an airplane. But the running boy is inside every man, no matter how old he gets.
Mitch Albom, the five people you meet in heaven
Eddie, the white-haired maintenance man is dead in that scene. It’s from a book I’m reading called the five people you meet in heaven. It’s really quite good. For the last years of his life, Eddie didn’t run, he used a cane to get around, and by his demeanor, I didn’t actually get a sense that he would have that running boy inside him. But I know adults and grandparents well into their years that exude the running boy. They are filled with this zest for the life they’re living that, routine or not, is filled with new and beautiful and old and boring and they don’t miss an opportunity to just be alive.
That paragraph grabbed me because I believe in that running boy and what he represents. I think we have to carefully nurture our inner child to keep the light alive. I think it represents the child within us that, if we maintain a measure of him in our hearts, will never grow up no matter what hard and cold and hurt things life presents to us. I think the running boy shows up in the way we continue to play and find joy, and in our abilities to be exactly as we are. I believe in that rapatious curiosity and display of a little hop-skip that may seem strange to the onlooker beside us.
On top of that, the writing caught me off guard–as most good writing does. I didn’t anticipate the link between the young in the old. But it was very natural, and very much understandable.
Cheers to the running boy.
GLK
