Your Feet

As soon as a baby is born, the first three things parents do is look to see if it’s a boy or a girl, admire his face, and then peek at his feet and see those 10 tiny toes and soft pinkish soles. We tend to underestimate our feet, and some people feel they are disconnected from the rest of their bodies. You notice this when looking at people’s feet, unkempt toes, rugged heels and overall disregard. What a difference when see the feet of a girl with a perfect pedicure, painted toe-nails, showing them off in pretty sandals. Yet those feet do an incredible amount of walking throughout a lifetime. The average adult will walk almost 75,000 miles over their lifetime – the equivalent of travelling around the world three times. A study of 2,000 adults found they each typically stroll 6,839 steps a day – amounting to 2,496,235 a year, 2 miles daily, over 700 miles annually. The human foot is a complex mechanical structure of the human body composed of 33 joints, 26 bones, and more than a hundred muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Think of how much work your feet accomplish. The constant pounding during a marathon, the weight they carry during  a weightlifting competition, the flapping during an Olympic 1500 meters race, the pirouetting of a ballerina during a ballet performance, the precise adjustment during a slalom race on snow, the crushing of grapes, the old-fashioned way,  the dribbling and scoring of immortal goals by Messi, Pele, Maradona and Bobby Charlton. And how about the walking done by missionaries as they travel to bring the Good News to converts, natives and agnostics. Now ask yourself: what am I doing with my feet, what have I done with them in the past, what do I plan to do with them in the future?