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As A.J. walked up to the grassy area in the middle of the park, he spotted P.J. playing frisbee with a rather large retriever.
She hadn't yet seen him, so he stopped to observe her carefree attitude as she tossed the frisbee.
Dressed more casually, she looked completely different than she did at the restaurant. Her blonde hair was loosely pulled back in a ponytail and she had on a light green T-shirt, jeans, and white sneakers.
“Hey P.J.”, he called out, “throw it over this way and we can take turns tossing it to your dog. What's his name?”
She turned at his voice and smiled. “Hey there. His name is Joe Dog. I call him J.D. for short”, she said as she sailed the frisbee his way. “You better run fast or he will beat you to it!”
He ran hard, glancing over his shoulder to try and gauge where the frisbee would descend. On his final look back, he was surprised to see J.D. overtaking him with a single focus of catching the frisbee.
A.J. stopped short and watched Joe Dog expertly determine exactly when the disc would be about 4 feet up in the air. Then in one seamless motion, he leaped, caught the frisbee, hit the ground at full stride, did a one-eighty, and slowed to a trot as he returned the disc to P.J. and dropped it at her feet. He sat, tail wagging, eagerly waiting for another run.
“That was awesome”, he said as they met and began to walk to a shady spot to sit. “He makes it seem so easy.”
“He doesn't know it's supposed to be hard. He just does it.”
A.J. thought about what she said for a moment. It seemed a curious statement, yet something clicked inside him when he heard it.
“Say that again”, he said.
“What? He doesn't know it's supposed to be hard, he just does it”, she asked.
“Yeah. That. I don't know exactly why, but that struck me as profound.”
“Well, I'm glad I can make such an impression on you”, she laughed easily.
“No, seriously. That thought … to just do something without thinking how difficult it is or isn't. It's like, in his mind, all he saw was himself catching the frisbee. The degree of difficulty or the possibility of not catching it never occurred to him.”
He doesn't know it's supposed to be hard, he just does it.
At first, she had a kind of puzzled look on her face, then a slow smile emerged.
“I see what you mean, A.J. He did what he saw himself doing with no other options possible.”
“Yeah. That's it. No other options possible.”
They played with J.D. for a little while longer, neither one talking. They just enjoyed the moment.
“It's such a pretty day, let's go sit on the grass over there by the stream”, A.J. said as he pointed to a shady spot under a rather large, stately-looking oak.
When they had settled, A.J. looked at her and asked, “P.J., have you ever wondered about why we are here? Is this it, or are we supposed to be doing something greater with our lives?”
He couldn't believe he hit her with such a philosophically deep question right away. He hardly knew her.
Her answer blew him away.
What did P.J. say that had such a profound impact on A.J.? Find out next week in Chapter Twelve: P.J. Talks.
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