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Mar
31

Run, Skip, Hop

As a kid I was always running around—through the woods, down to the neighbors, around the playground. Movement was not about exercise it was about pure pleasure. I did not think about needing to move, how to move, and of course I never considered the calories I might have burned. So why is it now that movement needs motivation, that exercise requires a means to measure, and mindfulness must pervade in all our motions? What if we took a turn with our actions and accentuated not the goal but the process?

It is true that a destination is a great motivator. Losing those ten extra pounds makes us get to the gym on a cold raining day and realizing a goal is all the more sweeter when we know we have put in the diligent work. However, could we not make some space to just do without doing for something in particular? Could we not just be without becoming something grander?

Mindfulness is our work of attending to what we do with full engagement. To me that is a critical piece to living. Woven in that mindfulness is the recognition that this one beautiful life is all we have. To enjoy it fully allows us to be focused as well as occasionally freely unfocused. Run with abandon. Slid in a skip. Have at a hop. It may be more than silly, but it is less about the goal and more about the gratitude that is simply life.