walking – sethlewis.ie

Strangers Are Some Of The Nicest People You’ll Ever Meet

During the first covid lockdown, with its strict travel restrictions, our family discovered a local treasure: a little spot known as Brown Island. Our neighbour told us about it. It’s not an easy place to find. When we went the first time I had to ring him because we couldn’t find the entrance hidden away down a country lane through a small gap in the hedge you’d never notice unless someone like my neighbour told you exactly where to look.

Two Powerful Skills You Already Have

Walking and eating are two of the most fundamentally basic human skills—the kind of things we learn in infancy. But I have found that walking and eating are also two of the most powerful contexts for experiencing human connection. What do we suggest when we want to see someone? More often than not, it involves eating at some point. Or walking. Or both.

Walking With God At 3mph

When we moved to Ireland, one of the things we noticed was how near we were to shops, schools, meetings, and most things, really. The old streets are laid out with feet in mind, not tyres, so the buildings in towns and villages are close together. Now, I can walk most places, and a lot of times, I do. I know it’s slower. Most people walk at about 3mph, and my car is faster than that even on narrow streets. From that perspective, walking isn’t the most efficient way to get around. So why do it?

Focusing On What I Can Measure

I got a watch recently that counts my footsteps. For my whole life I’ve never had a clue about the number of steps I take each day, but now I know, and all of a sudden I care. If I reach my goal number, I feel good. If I don’t, I feel less good. I do think my watch is good for me. It’s helping me be more aware of my level of activity, which helps me be more active, which I’m sure helps me be more healthy.

Walking is good, but there’s a lot more to my health than the amount of steps I get day by day. My watch can only measure certain things, and the most important aspects of how my body is working are beyond its ability to tell me about. I could have a severe underlying condition and still meet my step goal, and still get a little celebration on my wrist telling me how healthy I am. It’s even possible that an underlying condition could be made worse by more steps, not better. Thankfully that’s not true (as far as I know), but if it was true, I wouldn’t know it from the metrics on my watch.