For the past few weeks a pair of teenage Cooper’s hawks have been having a party in our backyard. They’re not really teenagers, but that’s what we’ve been calling them because they’re too old to be babies and too young to be adults. (I believe juveniles is actually the correct term, but that makes them sound like delinquents.)
Grownup hawks don’t mess around. They soar, they swoop, they eat, they repeat. These guys frolic. Every day, sometimes all day, they chase each other from one tree to the next. Watching them fly around without a care in the world is a reminder that life can be a whole lot of fun when we allow ourselves the freedom to play.
As adults in a hyper-stressed world, the very concept of “play” feels like a frivolous waste of time when every second of the day needs to be optimized for maximum efficiency. Well, what if the world wasn’t always like that? Or at least, the small part of the world that we have some semblance of control over, like our running time.
Imagine if we thought about running less like one more thing we had to do and more like play? Bet it would make running a lot more fun.