The Unspoken Invitation

When I was running this morning, I passed by a very fat man about my age waiting for the bus. He was wearing a heavy coat and scarf. God knows how long he had been waiting, and I felt sorry for him.
 
I was making loud noises while I was running, huffing and puffing. The fat man said to me, "How old are you?"
 
I said, "Fifty."
 
"You are running like a hundred-year-old man," he said.
 
After I covered thirty metres more, a thought entered into my mind: "Let me invite him to run with me." But this was all in the mental world, not in the practical world, and I kept on running.
 
-31 January 1982 
  
 
 
[Source: "The Unspoken Invitation" in Sri Chinmoy,  Run and Become, Become and Run, Part 9, Agni Press/Aum Publications, Jamaica, New York, 1983.]