Early Mornings at the Ayala Park

My doctor smiled after analyzing my latest laboratory report. For the third consecutive time my quarterly blood-sugar test had registered a "normal" result. Assessing my general physical condition, he speculated that I was on some major exercise program and advised me to stick to it. Little did he know what simple physical exercise I was doing.

I have been walking early mornings for sometime now, 30-45 minutes, four to five times a week. This is my main personal health and fitness routine; otherwise, I'm quite a sedentary creature. I don't find getting up early difficult to do, not anymore. I've come to love my morning walks. Besides, the Cebu Business Park - what many call simply as the Ayala Park - is nearby where I live.

The whole wide expanse of refreshing green space is all quiet and peaceful at 4:30 in the morning. Often, there would already be a few joggers when I get there. Then our number soon would multiply quickly.

There's this middle-aged couple whose actions declare that they are not husband and wife. They would always go behind a bush or tree for her to wipe off the sweat on his back. And they never walk side by side; he's always a few meters behind her.

A group of pretty young girls are always there for reasons apparently other than the pursuit of health or fitness-one such other reason being the cute young boys who are like dressed up for a sports pictorial. The girls giggle as soon as the boys would pass by. And the budding Valentinos would wave at their fans the way Leonardo DiCaprio did at the crowd during the Academy Awards.

Soon, morning-shift workers of the various establishments in the area begin to turn up, one by one. And the soya milk vendor appears, continuously pedaling his bike around, enticing joggers, walkers and everyone else to try his nutritious drink. The guy has quite a clientele; he is usually gone before I'm done with my set.

There seems to be a silent code among all early morning park-goers-that nobody minds nobody's business. The elderly bank manager doesn't, nor the stern-looking former schoolteacher, nor the lively athlete. I don't either. But, really, no one could help figuring out where everybody else is coming from, who they are, what brings them there. Always, an interesting, even naughty, thought comes to mind.

That's one interesting thing about mornings at the Ayala Park: people go there for their own personal reasons and are then filled with thoughts about other people. Different physical shapes never fail to incite different mental assumptions about people: their habits, their qualities, their lives. Some body forms look nice, some not quite.

I wonder what I look like in the other walkers' eyes or who I am in their minds. Do they think I'm a good person? I don't know. I hope so. Some of them would smile at me; others don't even seem to see me. I try to smile at everyone I meet. Sometimes an automatic smile forms on my face without my being aware of it. Perhaps all those smiles I have given are simply in return of the ones I unconsciously send off; perhaps those are just automatic responses too. Oh, well. At least I try to be nice, I'd think to myself.

My initial morning walks at the park were not as much fun. It was so hard getting up early. And those first few times were more of pauses than of actual walk. I was always looking at my watch, always counting the moments. It was so excruciatingly dull.

I sometimes found a good excuse for not walking. A group of youngsters that gathered at times at some deserted part of the park were rumored to have been responsible for some holdup incidents in the area. I'd skip doing my morning walks for days. But I knew that the park had security personnel roving around all the time and that, if at all true, such criminal incidents were very rare, isolated cases. The truth is: I was more lazy than scared.

Now, looking back, I realize what previously made the task less of a fun experience to me. It was perhaps because I was so focused on the arduous part of it, thus missing the many interesting sidelights. I went the narrow path, the one that centered only on my own defined objective while a bigger, interesting world pulsated all around.

It helps to veer the mind to other things than to be nose-on-the-grindstone when doing some not very interesting activities, like walking for a good number of minutes. It's good diversion to notice the surroundings, the scenery and the other people around, in order to forget the dreariness of the task at hand. Now, there's a lot more to my early mornings in the park than just the walking.

As the crickets' song fades away in the first rays of sunlight, the lively chirping of the birds takes over. It's hard to not to know that the world is waking up. Especially as the air begins to carry around an inviting whiff of breakfast from the homes just outside the park's concrete perimeter fence.

Then, vehicles begin to fill the streets. Fumes soon replace the morning mist. By then our free use of the Ayala Park is up, it's time to leave. Commercial bustle takes over. But tomorrow, early morning, the place would be ours again-after another night would have calmed the streets, and the trees cleaned the air.