Do we desensitize over time to just how beautiful this world is?

On the phone to my mother today, she mentioned she had been out on a walk - she had done about 4 or 5 miles with some friends; this is pretty good going considering she is 70.

When I asked her where she walked she told me about an old cinder track. These are paths that are left by the old coal mining trade. Originally railway lines cut through the beautiful north eastern England country side laying paths between the coal mines and storage and shipping areas. The coal was typically transported by ponies who hauled the coal carts along these tracks.

The railway tracks themselves are now long gone, but the paths are still there, the land is not owned by anyone and you can walk for miles along them. They are lined with trees, fields with grazing sheep, wild flowers, streams, and fruit bushes ready for picking in the late summer.

A few hints of their past remain, the soil is often black in places with pieces of coal embedded in it and old brick bridges remain standing, nothing going over the top and no carts going underneath either.

I walked many of these paths as a child, this was when we were more free to wander where we pleased with less threats such as perverts and traffic, the memories came back AND THEN IT STRUCK ME.

How brightly colored my memories are, the green of the grass was greener and the wild daffodils lining the edges of the tracks were the brightest of yellows.

The smell of the countryside was strong - all kinds of smells, hay, manure, flowers, and the salt air blowing in from the sea. I forgot that the air near to coast smells of salty seawater.

The tunnels and bridges were fantastic and spooky, our voices echoed in the tunnels forever. Sounds were louder. I remember standing underneath them imagining ponies pulling the coal along the tracks and men with sooty faces.

My imagination quite busy back then!

How did the builders of the bridge make such a perfect arch? Who had walked under these bridges in the last 2 hundred years? It’s as if the bridge’s memories are leaking out of each brick trying to tell you its history.

Everything was new back then, it was new to me anyway.

I think, or rather I know, we de-sensitize over time, we stop looking around us; we stop staring at stars, we forget to look for shapes in clouds. We are forgetting to consider and pay attention to the things that we see and hear.

I am writing this because I have decided to re-sensitize... is that a word?... if not, now it is for me anyway.

So why can't I go back, be that child again? When everything was newer, brighter, clearer, louder and more beautiful –

It still is the same beautiful world; it did not get any colder, so maybe I did.

Here is a little quote from my mother in law, she is an amazing roll model, (in her 80s she is still traveling, still learning, and still proactively enjoying her life), it goes something like this:

"When you're a child you are looking forward to growing up
When you are grown up you're looking forward to being married and having children.
Once you have children you look forward to watching them grow and find their own lives
Once they have left you are looking forward to finishing work and retirement
And once you are retired you are just happy to still be here"

So I guess what you can do in ALL these phases of life is to maximize your enjoyment of them, and they say the best things in life are free, and they are. They are surrounding us all.