Opening ourselves up to what the world has to show us

Rainy Day (by Gene Wilburn)

I try to take two walks during my work day, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. (My FitBit is a good encourager for that.) It’s always the same walk — once around the office building, about a half mile each time around. Sometimes I’ll be adventurous and go counterclockwise instead of clockwise to vary things up.

Over the almost three years at my current workplace, I have probably taken this walk hundreds of times. It’s stress relief. It’s a breath of fresh air. It’s one of the few routines in my work life that allows me to keep some semblance of order when everything inside the building seems to be changing so often.

I’ve taken this same exact walk so many times, though, that sometimes I forget to notice what’s going on around me. I may step inside afterwards and realize that I didn’t actually see or hear or smell or touch anything outside of eighteen inches in front of my nose. That’s the nasty side of those everyday activities — they can become SO automatic that we don’t leave ourselves open to see what else there might be in this morsel of time for us to experience.