On Friday, my wife and I went to St. Louis for a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. The concert started at 8:00. We planned for her to pick me up at my workplace in Strafford at 4:00 and we would be on our way. Unfortunately, as usual, things did not go exactly as planned. She didn't pick me up until closer to 5:00.
The trip up was hurried, but uneventful. Yes, we sped. She drove the first leg, but we did the Jedi mind trick that seems to work on cops, at least until it doesn't. We made sure to not exceed 7 mph over the speed limit: "These are not the speeders you are looking for." The fact that we were in a Traverse, essentially a mini-van that pretends it isn't, made us a little less likely to be pulled over.
We arrived at the motel, the Millenium, at about 8:00. We elected to just park and walk to the Scottrade Center, which was where the concert was taking place. We asked the check-in clerk at the Millenium how to get to Scotttrade. We were given three options: the shuttle, the Metro, or a taxi.
Barb and I looked at each other. We asked about walking, but she looked at us quizzically and said, "But it's six blocks. Maybe seven?" This seemed to put it beyond walking distance in her mind. We left, thinking maybe we would take one of her options, but back out in the open air, walking still seemed the best option to us. Except we hadn't asked directions for walking.
So we parked the car in the parking garage, and exited the parking garage. A panhandler asked me for a dollar so he could go buy beer. I appreciated the honesty, I guess, because I gave him a dollar. I also asked him which direction to the Scottrade Center. He appeared to be homeless, surely he would know how to walk around downtown and where things were.
He pointed us in a direction, but he warned us it was six blocks. I couldn't help thinking to myself, does no one walk in St. Louis? Of course, we were worried about missing the beginning of the concert, but it had become something of a point to prove that six blocks was not an insurmountable distance on foot.
We started walking. Downtown St. Louis is a nice place. There are gardens, and parks, and fountains, and best of all, there are maps every so often. We located one of these, and the homeless guy had not pointed us in exactly the wrong direction, but he was close.
It was, as always, hot and muggy. I confess, I may have perspired a bit in the walk, but it was not unenjoyable, and it certainly wasn't the Herculean task portrayed by the motel clerk and the panhandler. We made it, and the opening band hadn't even wrapped up yet when we got there. We weren't that impressed by them, anyway, but we only heard two songs. Then there was that strange, equipment shifting intermission between musical acts, and RHCP blew the lid off the place.
After the concert, we walked back to the motel. Another six blocks making it a total of twelve blocks walked that evening. It may have even been more, because we probably wandered an extra block or two on the way there until we got our bearings.
And this leads me to my point, I guess, despite my wandering a bit. We become accustomed to a certain way of doing things, or we impose limits on what we will do based on societal norms. We allow ourselves to be limited. Barb and I were ignorant enough to believe we could walk that six blocks, and we did. It was not really that much of a task, and yet to natives of the area it was something that just wasn't done.
We can laugh at them for their self-imposed limitations, be we need to look at our own lives as well. What limitations do we impose on ourselves based strictly on what the people around us do? Of course, we should keep in mind morality and not harming others when we try to push the boundaries of those things that just aren't done, but there are experiences out there waiting for us if we just take a moment to ask ourselves: why don't we walk that six blocks?
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