Recently I saw some football players skipping on the sideline of a game. I have read that skipping has to do with agility and balance, good reason for their behavior. While as children we seem to instinctively skip, as we age we tend to abandon that activity. However, skipping is much easier on the joints and burns 30% more calories than running that sometimes replaces it as exercise.
I was stunned at how much information is available on skipping and jump rope from the benefits to ways to skip “properly” and jump ropes with magnetic sensors that record fitness data. But what I recall about skipping is the sense of joy, on a par with splashing in mud puddles. The author of the blog CALMERme suggests that as children we are free to experience life, as adults are generally making all the decisions about us. But as adults we become more focused on the narrative of our lives, the decisions we are now making ourselves. She wrote that as adults “We go from joy to satisfaction. From play to work. From experiencing self to narrative self.”
While Jeanne on iSkip.com offered that skipping might resolve many of our adult health problems, I think of how it might provide something even broader in scope. Consider:
I don’t think it’s possible to skip with a frown on your face… I’d like to see the world’s governing and terrorist leaders on a skipping tour through the Middle East and across the subcontinent and China to Korea. ~Sue Irwin, courtesy of iSkip.com
May we be bearers of hope, the “wait staff” of Hope’s Café for each other and all those we encounter. Shalom, Kate
Hope’s Café Bous: ” I often think of the time when we were all young… how naturally we lived, how we bounded along — we seldom walked — don’t you remember it? Why did we go tripping over the ground, do you suppose? Because of the lightness of our hearts. I, for one, hope never to outgrow my childhood… But we are apt to let the dry husks of responsibility make us stiff in the joints, and playing… gets to be one of the lost arts.” ~Alwyn M. Thurber, Quaint Crippen, 1896
Hope's Cafe 