I do a lot of stuff the hard way, stupidly. If I were you, I’d be careful about competing with me. I became a champion crawler long after I had already started to walk. Walking feet into miles when I could have been sprinting. And now, quicker and more surefooted than ever before, I’m at work practicing sitting still. Just to see how it feels. And why, out of all the many paces of my life, does this one seem most impossible. Perhaps it’s the only one no one prepared us for. Never received my warning how growing old can be so forlorning as to cause paralysis to perfectly healthy bodies. Frozen, mid-autumn, seventy degrees, locked knees and held breath. The end is a breeze, a blade, a fire like the fire we build to heat our homes. You crawling, walking, sprinting, are its legs. You carry it. Without you, these objects sit unmoved. Whether it’s something you came up with on your own, or if you were shown it, it helps to own it. Like the hard way. Like stupidity. A thousand reasons why no one else in the world does it that way. And one that keeps it yours.