The Weight of Walking Forward

There are moments when life distills its essence into a single, devastating clarity. Today, it really hit me like a punch to the gut. It was not actually frightening, though deeply depressing in the way that only truth can be. As someone who has dedicated years to studying aging and wrestling with philosophical questions, I suddenly found myself confronted with both the meaning and meaninglessness of our existence in one brief encounter.

The story begins five years ago, during the climax of the COVID-19 pandemic. Do you remember how it felt to be locked up like a prisoner in your own town? The gyms were shuttered, swimming pools drained, sport clubs barricaded—yet somehow, paradoxically, this confinement birthed a renaissance of human movement. The promenade of Nahariya, my small coastal town, suddenly transformed into a bizarre museum of human determination. Bodies of every age and condition claimed the sea-kissed pathway, turning municipal benches into gym equipment and concrete barriers into balance beams.

It was during this time of collective awakening that I encountered him.

An eighty-year-old former school teacher who had discovered, perhaps for the first time, the intoxicating marriage between physical exertion and mental clarity. The smile of this man was intensely infectious, and his positivity was almost aggressive in its persistence. "Exercise," he gayly stated with the weighty conviction of someone who had spent decades shaping young minds, "is the foundation of everything—body, mind, and soul." As a medical doctor, I could only nod in agreement, though I suspected his wisdom ran much deeper than my rich clinical expertise.

We met several times over the following months. Same grin. Same boundless optimism. Same ritual of greeting each dawn with deliberate motion. He represented something I couldn't quite pin down—maybe the idea that aging is just another subject to master, another challenge to tackle head-on.

Then life intervened, as it always does.

I departed for Yale, chasing my postdoctoral dreams across the Atlantic. Two years later I returned to find my homeland transformed by war. Hamas first, then Hezbollah—the promenade that had once symbolized hope now felt exposed, vulnerable. My morning walks became infrequent, chance encounters rarer still.

But today, I saw him again.

The walker came first. Its aluminum legs were clicking against asphalt with scrupulous precision. Then the figure bent over it, concentrated entirely on the monumental task of placing one foot correctly before the other. The same path, the same determination, but everything else had changed. His face, once animated with joy, now wore the expression of someone engaged in the most fundamental struggle of all: the battle against entropy itself. The same route he had previously navigated with pleasure and energy, now demanded everything he had.

He looked right through me, with no recognition, and no spark of memory.

His once sparkling eyes now turned inward, fighting a battle I could barely comprehend.

That's when it really hit me. This brutal poetry of human existence condensed into a single moment. Here was life's purpose laid unembellished but simple; not in some grand philosophical treatise but in the tenacious shuffle of an old man refusing to quit. In that moment, I suddenly understood something very profound about the purpose of life. It is actually not a destination to be reached, but a continuous struggle to be embraced. It's about the refusal to stop moving, even when everything else has changed.

Not for everyone, mind you.

Most people surrender to comfort, to the path of least resistance. But for the best of us, life is an ongoing confrontation with our own limitations, an endless series of battles against the inevitable. So, we keep walking the same path even when our legs shake, even when nobody remembers who we used to be.

The elderly teacher, unknowing, had become my greatest philosophical instructor. In his walker-aided painstaking journey along the same promenade where he had once run with vitality, he demonstrated the highest form of human purpose: to continue, to persist, to struggle not because victory is guaranteed, but because the struggle itself is what makes us human. He proves what I'd been missing in all my philosophical wandering. The real meaning isn't something we find—it's something we create through sheer, stubborn persistence.

This is the grim inspiration I carry with me today and want to share with you.

Now I see that life's meaning lies not in its length or its ease, but in our willingness to keep walking.

Life's purpose isn't a reward for the faithful or a prize for the clever. It's the decision to keep struggling when struggle is all that remains.

Therefore, the continuous struggle isn't life's burden—it's life's gift, available only to those brave enough to claim it.

Today was depressing as hell…

But maybe that's exactly the point!