What does living mean to you? It might mean family holidays, meals out, a trip to the seaside, or simply the chance to log off from your emails.
For me, living used to be really quite exciting, or so I thought. It could be six foreign assignments a year, multiple UK ones, pursuing and filing endless stories to national newspapers, or contributing to RHS Show gardens.
I was always on the move, going from one thing to the next, relishing time with the people I loved but never making enough space for it. Running, running, running.
It wasn’t living, of course, it was workaholism, avoidance and busyness. It was fun, I grant you that, but it wasn’t living.
Living is walking for five minutes to open the church on a Monday morning, praying that people will be blessed by it being open, having time to enjoy the red roses in the hedgerow and breathe in the scene of honeysuckle on the way.
Living is pausing while skipping out my friend’s stables to watch her daughter ride her pony to school on the penultimate day of term, her last at primary school, and feel joy and pride.
Living is noticing how stressed the trees are in the heat: silver birch leaves turning yellow, larch needles covering the lane.
Living is walking, not going everywhere in the car, most notably to work doing 80mph in the slow lane of the motorway.
Walking gives you time to live.
Walking also gives you time to notice the people who are still hurtling, not conscious of their environment as it whizzes past them like a screen set.
I live on a chicane of blind bends. It’s narrow. There are men, and they are all men, invariably driving black cars (BMWs, Audis and Teslas) who seem to take this chicane as somewhere between an afront and a challenge.
Walking back from shutting the church up the other evening, a man in a black Audi decided to ignore all the bends – and the speed limit – and go straight through. I had to throw myself into a hedge to survive the experience.
In the past, I’d have had some very un-Church of England names for him. These days I just felt sorry for him, and his kind. That isn’t living.
The Audi driver reminded me of a man driving an E-type Jag about a decade ago. I was driving to see my much-beloved loan horse, Duke, possibly the dearest horse who ever lived. Just thinking about Duke made me drive more steadily. Mr E-type was eager to show his horsepower and revved past me onto the motorway.
‘Nice car, mate,’ I said to myself as he vanished into the distance, ‘but I have a horse, and that’s much nicer.’
Speed and busyness aren’t living, but we can easily mistake them for it. Hopefully over the summer, we’ll all have the chance to walk, look and live.