A framed print once resided on the wall above my grandmother's desk. Nobody knows what happened to it, but both my father and I remember contemplating it as children.

The artist described the stages of a person's life with eight or ten little drawings. Unlike other prints illustrating the progress of civilization, this print represented the life of a single person from cradle to grave.

At the left was a cradle. Then in a progression, a child at play, a youth, and an adult. The drawings continued in a bell curve, with person at the height of maturity at the peak, and then gradually crouching under the weight of infirmities. Then the person resorted to a cane, perhaps a chair, and finally a bed at the time of death.

Grandma gave us something to remember, even though the picture is gone.

To me, "The Ages of Man" represents the force of walking in the DNA of our bodies and in the psyche of our minds. After birth, we want to walk. During a full life, we run, play, work, and nurture. Then we begin to slow down and gradually lose our mobility. Often our ability to walk is the last thing to go.

Perhaps the fullest expression of our happiness is the ability to walk.

Indeed, the Declaration of Independence speaks of the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." For many people that pursuit finds expression in the enjoyment of a walk.

When you jump for joy, you leap off your feet.