Three months ago a rare and aggressive form of cancer began souring up my Dad’s insides. The disease is galloping through his organs now, it’s relentless.

My Dad took a walk every day for as long as I can remember. His beloved walks, in a few short and heartbreaking months, have gone from a 5 km. wander through the ravine, to walking the sidewalks around his neighbourhood, to shuffling up and down the corridors of his building. Today, it’s a lonely line from the couch to the bathroom.   He looks out his window wistfully and knows doors are closing for him each day. He’s losing this fight in the first few rounds, with barely the time to process the speed at which his world is shrinking. From where I, and others that love him, stand, it feels like a cruel, sped up time lapse of a life force vacating its home. Chased out by an indifferent monster.

This body is precious and fleeting. Every day when I leave his apartment I feel a wave of emotions. And an unmistakable urge to bust out into a full sprint across the parking lot. To do some cartwheels. To howl at the moon. How easily we forget that our bodies have expiry dates. Which makes every day the right day to use them.

There’s a scene in the thriller-comedy Get Out when the gardener comes bolting across the estate grounds in the middle of the night. Why is he running around full tilt in the darkness? Simply because now he can.  (If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know exactly why…)

If you’re able-bodied in any way, please step away from your chair and get up and move. Any way you want. Take a deep breath and feel the wonder of your body expanding. Feel the blood moving through limbs, feel the vitality in your belly. Just play with this charged up, a multi-limbed gift that’s designed to move in an infinite number of ways.  Swim, dance, swing a kettlebell, shake, stretch or breathe in time to your legs as they trace a line along your favourite walking route.

The days are short, there’s work to do, meals to make, emails to answer and inertia is a strong force. But the mind is famously stronger. Let’s use it to kickstart some movement, any movement, into our sleepy limbs and our bodies will wake up and do the rest. Happily, with gratitude. Because we still can.