I try going for few minutes of morning walk as much as I can. I don’t succeed every day, but most days of the week I go out, unless the famed Mumbai monsoon boxes me inside my home. I am sure many of my friends would be doing the same. Though I can’t speak for others, at least I don’t have a spring in my step every time I step out in the morning. But the day it is there, it’s an amazing experience. The walk becomes a pleasure, my own weight – I must confess that I’m slightly overweight – doesn’t seem to exist, I don’t feel the breathlessness, I feel like walking more and more, my shoes become more comfortable, I seem to enjoy and appreciate the nature more, trees, chirping birds, one corner of the sky becoming orange and sun rising slowly, few people going out early in the morning to their work in a great hurry, which is when I smile and have vicarious pleasure that I can give time to myself in the morning, car cleaning guys working hard to clean our cars etc. Also, I’m cheerful that day. Why I wrote all this in great detail is because I see all these things and enjoy them only when I have a spring in my step.

This brings me the question as to what’s that which brings a spring to our steps. Why is it that one day we have it and the other day we may not? To my mind, to have spring in our steps there are two essential ingredients. One is good health and ability to walk on our own two legs. Second is the healthy and optimistic mind. In fact we’ve all grown up listening that healthy mind lives in a healthy body. So why’s that I’m writing this today when we all know it? Reason is that though we know it, most of us tend to forget and when we remember it either we brush it under the carpet or it is too late.

Spring in the step is an excellent yardstick to measure our physical and mental well-being. Imagine a day when we have minor fever, cold or cough. Would we enjoy our morning walk? Chances are that on some pretext or the other we will skip our schedule to walk that day. This is situation which presumes that we are physically able to walk. There are whole lot of people who are suffering from multiple ailments or even obesity due to which they are just unable to step out for a walk. It is often said that the best things in life are free. Our ability to walk is one such thing that is free but is often unappreciated till we have it or till we lose it.

This means we need to appreciate it while we have it and make all efforts to preserve this ability to walk by being healthy. When it comes to health, prevention is always better than cure. But then seldom do we think on those lines. I was not always overweight. In fact I was skinny. Recently we had an alumni get-together of our batch and everybody told me that I look the same as I did years ago except that I’ve put on lot of weight. People just couldn’t believe that I could also become overweight. Reason is that I never bothered about preventive healthcare for many years of my life, which were the most important years of my life from this perspective. I was a carefree eater who loved to eat and lived to eat. Despite that there was hardly any kind of exercise till I hadn’t put on weight. My friends who were conscious of their health and weight were often butt of my jokes. But then once there was a wakeup call in the form of severe back ache which woke me from my slumber. Slowly, I became disciplined and to some extent am conscious of preserving my ability to walk. Having said that, the extra kilos that I had put on during my carefree days are my permanent companions now. However hard I may try to shed them, I fail. This brings me to the issue of healthcare where prevention is much better than cure. In fact today I see many of my friends suffering from lifestyle ailments like diabetes, hypertension, obesity etc. Some in fact have had sudden pain in their chests and have undergone angioplasty also. All these people have lived a carefree life without ever thinking of preventive healthcare. In one of my earlier articles I had written that we believe ‘problems strike only our neighbours – till one fine day they hit us’. So we believe that all these ailments will happen only to our neighbours till one fine day we get hit and become dependent on regular medication. This is also the time when we start going out for walks and becoming careful of our diet. Unfortunately, when we go for walk now or when we do any exercise now, the spring in step will be lesser. The activity that we do now will be more of a punishment and something like a medication and not voluntary. How can something that is a punishment give us pleasure and happiness? To enjoy spring in our step it is essential that we become conscious of this fact and guard our health with greater care than we guard our wealth.

To the sceptics who disagree with me, I’d only suggest to imagine a situation where they have little wealth but a great health and spring in their steps and compare it with a situation of enormous wealth but poor health, dependency on medication, inability to walk, inability to lead a normal life. The answer will be obvious. This is when we will remember the adage that ‘health is wealth’. Unfortunately, wealth if lost can be regained, but health once lost is lost for ever.

Now we come to the second part of ‘spring in our step’, which is our mental state. The day we wake up in depressive mood and drag ourselves to go for a walk we will suddenly find that the same body which we carry everyday has become heavier. Our feet don’t lift so easily. Every step becomes a burden to be carried. The same trees, fresh air, rising sun that we liked every other day appear non-existent. A depressed mind, sombre mood will reflect in our morning walk. First, we will try to avoid leaving the bed and if we do we will try doing anything but wear our shoes and step out. If we manage doing that we will find it quite a task to drag ourselves. It is possible that we reduce our schedule of walk and return early.

While I’m saying this, there’s another possibility. That is you go out in a sombre mood, you start walking, may be with a friend or friends, see the chirping of birds, feel the breeze, formation of beautiful shapes of clouds with whom sun is playing hide and seek, sunshine coming occasionally, clean green leaves on the trees due to last night’s rain, the smell of earth when the rain drops fall on it, you see happy faces going out for work, school children in their uniforms waiting for their transport smiling and joking and proud parents escorting them and then suddenly life starts flowing back into you. You feel cheerful, light, forget worries and stresses, start enjoying everything around you and the spring in the step is back. Gathering courage to wear shoes and stepping out made so much of a difference to you. Your mood when you left for walk and when you returned are now quite opposite to each other. Once the spring in your step is back, you are ready to conquer the world, face challenges of a new day, overcome them and end the day contented and happy.

Now, in my humble view, to have a spring in our step we need to have good health, physically and mentally. But as the above real life situation shows, physical good health and mental good health feed on each other. We just have to imagine ourselves down with some minor physical ailment. While it lasts don’t we become irritable and lose interest in everything? Mental make-up gets completely disturbed and more than the little physical discomfort it is our mood that hurts us more. Ask any wife how her husband behaves if he has little fever. Her agony will be double as compared to her husband since he would have made her life miserable due to this little illness. Pun apart, physical ailment has a disproportionately large impact on our mental wellbeing. We just have to get into the shoes of people who are bedridden or wheel chair bound. How’s their life? Believe me, it is herculean task for them to keep themselves motivated. More often than not the care takers get sick of their attitude and temperament rather than doing anything for them. And the people themselves are so frustrated with their own situation that they don’t realize when it starts getting reflected in their behaviour with others. But we see exceptions in life. Two persons, same age, same symptoms, same ailment, same doctor and same medication but one recovers faster and the other takes much longer time to recover or not to recover. Difference is made by the mental state of both, the Will Power that they both have. So any physical disability or illness can be conquered by a healthy and strong mind. We have many examples where people who have severe physical disability have managed exceptional feats by sheer Will Power.

Conversely, we are all aware that whole lot of ailments in the today’s world are related to our stressful mental situation. Some knowledgeable people call them psychosomatic diseases. Mental stress has unlimited ways to unravel itself in your physical wellbeing. Hypertension, diabetes, skin diseases, back pain and spondylitis etc are few of the variety of ways our stresses can reflect on ourselves. Worst part is that though the reasons for stresses and the stresses themselves may go one day, they leave a permanent scar in terms of physical ailment. This may be far worse and long lasting than the original stressful situation. But once again, if we have two persons going through exactly same mental situation at a given point in time the effect of this would be different on each and it will be hugely impacted by their physical well-being. One who’s conscious of the pitfalls and takes care of his physical health by regular work outs is less likely to suffer any lasting physical damage than the person who leaves his health in the hands of circumstances. Not only that, regular work outs and physical wellbeing help him in maintaining his mental balance.

Having said all this, I wish to revert to my original topic, of having a spring in our step. Having a spring in our step actually has little to do with our morning walk alone. It is more about a person who’s cheerful, healthy, feels comfortable with himself and the world around him, has positive thoughts and enjoys life. Such a person is capable of dealing with the life’s situations and challenges much better. He has a spring in his step not because he has fever challenges in life but because he is capable of addressing those challenges and keeping the bounce and spring in his step intact.

My Little Thought Of Life for this is that for any human being to enjoy this life it is essential to have a bounce, a spring in his step. And for this it is essential to have twin ingredients of good physical health and mental health. And preventive health care is far more effective than curative health care. This means, we have a duty first, foremost and above all, to maintain a good physical and mental health ourselves. If we have spring in our step we can do anything in life, right from earning money to enjoying that money to taking care of loved ones and not being dependent on others. Irrespective of our work and business pressures, time requirements, constraints, it is essential for us to give some time to ourselves to maintain our health. This could be by any means like playing games, swimming, yoga, walk, meditation, reading and writing books, indulging in hobbies, anything that takes care of your physical and mental exercises and relaxation. To my younger colleagues who are busy running the rat race with full sincerity as if there’s no tomorrow, have patience, have some time for yourself and learn to say no to bosses to who eat away all the free time you may have for yourself. Given a choice between losing a promotion one year and losing your health, former is infinitely better. To my older colleagues who are fit today without preventive healthcare, I’d say you are just being lucky. Please get on to the bandwagon of preventive healthcare as of yesterday. And my friends who have started losing the spring in their step I’d say, be strong mentally as it’ll make you strong physically too, provided you work towards healthcare consciously.

To my friends and readers wish you all a spring in your steps, for ever.