Play in Your Own Back Yard

Yesterday was a gorgeous sunny Sunday morning, too nice to sit inside! We took the tandem out for an early morning loop through our 'back yard'. There are some wonderful leafy lanes in the Northwest of England, back roads called B roads. Sometimes not even wide enough for two cars to pass, they meander all over the countryside past farms, sheep and hidden old country houses.

The terrain is quite hilly, but the scenery is so beautiful it distracts you from how hard you're pedalling. Shady lanes with the sun filtering through, hedgerows lining the sides with breaks here and there where you glimpse a field, a pasture, the view across a valley. The flowers are out everywhere and the gardens are lush. The rhododendron trees (yes, trees!) which grow wild in the woods here are in full bloom adding a shade of purple to all the green.

And as you pedal down the lane, it smells like summer! Do you remember when you were a kid and you played outside all day during the summer? In the woods, the field or the pasture? Remember how it smelt, hot, a hint of dust, a whiff of flowers and new mown grass? For me, that's the smell of summer.

After the leafy lanes, we circled past Hoghton Tower and we passed the Hoghton Church as they rang the bells for the 10:00 service. The church bells in England sound just like the ones at the end of the movie Scrooge, that very old Englandy sound, very distinct from other places. Beautiful to listen to and very oldy worldy.

One of the things I think we forget as we rush about in our busy lives is what's in our own back yard and how great some of those things are. You probably feel that you live in a pretty nice place, don't you? (Or you wouldn't live there, right?) There are lots of things to do, some beautiful (perhaps gorgeous) bits, pieces of interesting history. Perhaps when you think about it it's quite a fascinating place. How much time do you spend enjoying it? When was the last time you took a drive, ride or walk through some of the nice places close to where you live? Do you get out and enjoy where you are or are the only places you get to the house, the car, the office, the mall?

What are all the things that you could do, see, experience that are close by your home? Close by - in your neighborhood, your town / city, your state or the next state? Have you done them all or are they sitting there largely ignored as we race by rushing from one thing to the next? Chances are, because we're all so busy making a living, we're not 'living a living' while we're doing it - and there's so much living that can be done by walking out your back door.

Tomorrow we're heading out to explore the 'state' next to us, Ireland. It's just a short ferry ride away and neither of us has ever been. We're going on the motorbike and going all the way around the outside. We'll stay in reasonably priced B&B's and actually get to talk to people who live there. Easy to get to, not too expensive, gorgeous and in our 'back yard' - something we've ignored because we were just too busy!

Enjoying one's 750,000 Hours isn't just about when work stops and you can do whatever you want all day, it's also (perhaps more so) about enjoying every hour - the journey, not just the destination. Chances are the journey will take far longer than the destination so how can we make the journey be just as great as the destination?

Perhaps by enjoying what there is along the way...