Go Hiking and Get Your Life Back

So you ask me, “How does that work?” Well, if you have been reading these odes to the mountains you will understand that is the easiest task. All it takes is a few hikes and your life changes.

How does it change? First, you go hiking. Before you went hiking you were so distracted by emails, Instagram, Tik Tok, and even Microsoft teams that you had lost your life. It had disappeared into the electronic Matrix. Once you get on the trails things settle down.

The Matrix

You might think that when you are looking at your phone instead of looking at the person across from you that you have your life firmly in hand. Or you are supposed to be exercising but you are sitting on a bench at the gym staring at your phone.

Your mind is in a Matrix composed of all the lures of the electronic universe. You have to escape it to see it for what it is, an addiction so heinous that it will grind you up and spit you out into a pile of wasted lives.

Busyness

Oh, you say that you have your phone under control and you are in charge of it. But you are going from one meeting to another, rushing from one office to another, catching a plane, a lunch date, or grabbing a bite on the run. You have lost your life in the busyness of it.

How long has it been since you had time, even ten minutes to sit and think? A long time I imagine.

The Solution

The best solution is to go hiking! Put your phone in your pack and only take it out to take a picture when you get to the top of a mountain. If you need to take a picture before you reach the top then you still need to keep it in your pack. Make it hard to get at.

Then you hiking, with trees surrounding you and the odor of pine needles or will strawberries wafting up to you. The breeze is on your face. You relax as you push yourself forward. You become one with nature. You get your life back.

A Little More

Maybe a quote from one of Eldredge’s other books, Epic. He says, “We have grown dull towards this world in which we live; we have forgotten that it is not normal or scientific in any sense of the word. It is fantastic. It is a fairy tale through and through. Really now. Elephants? Caterpillars? Snow? At what point did you lose your wonder at it all?” “Perhaps we come upon a waterfall, clouds have made a rainbow in a circle around the sun…”

Go hiking, experience it all (maybe not Elephants), and get your life back!