When my granddaughter Hanah is hungry, she eats. When she is full, she stops eating, and no amount of shaking the bottle or pushing it at her lips will induce her to drink more. When she’s tired, she sleeps.  When she’s bored, she moves on to something else, or, if nothing else is available, she fusses until something else appears.

Hanah lives in the moment. She knows no other way of living. 

I, her grandmother, have the dubious distinction of knowing a different way of living, in which my mind often tries to change reality into something that suits it better.  Case in point: this fall, after three months of enforced idleness (I pulled a muscle in my groin), followed by an old-fashioned full-blown cold, I decided that I knew better than my 64-year-old body.  I jumped back into my regular exercise program of running and weight-lifting.  Mind would prevail over muscle, I told myself, and it was time to Get Back Into Shape ASAP.

So, yesterday, while I still had the cold, I went to the YMCA and lifted heavier weights than I was lifting even before the groin pull. I pushed myself through every part of the weight training class.

For the rest of the day, I felt like jello, weak and shaky.  I then went to bed, complaining at God because this cold wasn’t going away the way I wanted it to, and I felt like crap.

Between Hanah and myself, one of us has more wisdom.  Which one is it?