Saturday was a glorious day sandwiched betwixt the two most holy days of the year and yet to me it felt entirely unholy. Sure the weather was beautiful and the scent of barbeque wafted up to my second story apartment but to me those were not signs of the holy spirit. Maybe in my younger years I would have been eating pancakes at the dining room table anticipating the grand craft of egg painting in the afternoon but my 23 year old Saturday self was far less endeering, sneering as I ate my meager portion of applesauce in the saturday morning sun.
Maybe I was in a bad mood because I had to work Good Friday and Easter Sunday or maybe it was because my parents negleted to tell me they were out of town antiquing along the northern California coast Easter weekend but something definitely was souring my mood to the degree where watching hours of the Real World Las Vegas seemed like the most conducive way to pass hours of my precious time. After watching a disgraceful four episodes, the sun waned in the afternoon sky warning me that my day was nearly wasted. At this point, I knew that there was only one thing I could do to redeem myself from condemning slothdom, a run.
I knew this run had to be difficult but not so difficult that it would make me loathe the decision to leave the glorious comfort of the couch. I decided running to Balboa Park would be the best of my possible choices as it would allow me to reward my exertion with a stroll in the park after running up a massive hill.
After procrastinating another 45 minutes "trying" to locate my running shoes, I finally shoved myself out into the streaming afternoon sun. After running for what seemed like forever on my lead legs, I finally found myself in Balboa Park. As soon set my New Balance on the park's crossover bridge I knew that I had made the next best choice to Paxil to elevate my brain chemistry. Maybe it was the excercise induced endorphins or maybe I was just desperate for a piece of happiness but it seemed as though I had just stepped into the real life version of Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World. I slowed my pace to my lollygagging stroll while walking behind glassy eyed tourists snapping pictures of the San Diego skyline. I dodged rogue toddlers in easter outfits who are too short to see until you nearly trip over them. Couples in some blissful phase of passionate love walked hand in hand lost in eachother's eyes while one pair married in the afternoon sun. Groups of attractive foreigners spoke in their prospective languages wearing different versions of the same man capri and I soaked it all in, one glorious moment to the next.
In the end, I only needed about 20 minutes of Balboa park utopia in order to regain some of my faith in humanity. I found my Easter in that afternoon sun.
