Coffee Contemplation: Hills
They are hills, until they aren't.
Audio narration by David Marlow
Transcript:
David Marlow-For this week's coffee contemplation, I want to talk about hills. I went on an adventure the other day with my oldest granddaughter, who is seven, Miss C. One thing that she said to me particularly caught my attention. She's going to a summer camp all summer—she spends some days with us, but when she's not there, she and her brother go to a summer camp called Camp Quad.
She told me yesterday that the hill at Camp Quad has gotten smaller. I thought, well, how cool is that? I asked her, "Did it get smaller or did you just get stronger?" She goes, "No, it definitely got smaller," which I thought was an interesting observation.
In my running, I run in and around my neighborhood on some nature trails. I live on the edge of what they call the terminal moraine, where the glaciers stopped years ago. A lot of this area is very hilly—in fact, there are very few flat areas to run.
I remember early in my running journey, about 15 years ago, I was doing some running and I'd come to a spot that was a hill, and I would go "ugh" as I came up to the hill. Then I remember at some point a year or so later, thinking I was coming up to that hill, and realizing I had already passed it—it wasn't a hill anymore.
I came up with the saying for my running: "They are hills until one day they aren't," because that's just true. It's a hill until you get stronger and better, or more able to handle it, or you've taken on significantly tougher challenges, so the hill doesn't seem like that much anymore.
I thought about that. I thought about my seven-year-old granddaughter and her seeing that the hill had gotten smaller. So I want you to contemplate on that. I want you to sip your coffee and think about that. Are there some hills that you've tackled that are no longer hills? Are there any hills that are getting smaller, or are there any hills that need to get smaller? What might you do to make that happen?
That's your coffee contemplation for this Friday.
Quest well.
