JOURNAL: September 11, 2006

Yesterday was a perfectly beautiful late-summer day, ideal for any kind of exercising. In the morning, I enjoyed a fine “workout” at school – though I did mental, rather than physical, “calisthenics”. I spent a few hours permitting good ideas for teaching come to me as softly as a September breeze. Actually, perhaps I shouldn’t call it exercise, because it really wasn’t hard labor of any sort. The thoughts simply swept through me and I effortlessly put them into my plans for the coming week. In the afternoon I did another kind of training on the kills of the park. I loaded my backpack with 20 pounds of weights and climbed the stone steps for about 30 minutes, huffing and puffing all the way. The brilliant sun made the park an especially beautiful place to be, which rendered the exercise almost as enjoyable as the mental workout in the morning at school. I had a final “training session” at some friends’ house last night, and it was the easiest and most productive of all. All we did was eat appetizing food and share some excellent conversation, but in the process we exercised our abilities as good friends. If you want to be a friend to someone, you have to work hard to keep the relationship “fit”, and last’s night dinner gathering was as productive as a few hours at the gym.