Behind our house, there were rolling hills, as far as the eye could see.

And we would run them, we would run up and down until the sun disappeared over the horizon,

and we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces.

In a sense, it bothers me that 25 years later, I even have to ask why something so simple

and elementary could be fun. How something so out in the open could be profound, something

so basic. Oh, how we've flipped the script.

Now, today I build and scratch and claw and fight and chase and seek and climb.

But my soul just wants the hill.

And you might hear that and think, well, how tragic to live in that gap to exist without

that which you so deeply desire.

But let me reframe the scene.

I never gave up the hills, and neither did you.

They're there.

Covered in complexity, deemed at some point to be just a little too simple,

a little too elementary, so we built on top of them.

We laid a foundation of external expectations.

We erected structures that would bring us validation.

In other words, we built someone else's world on top of our own called it a day and has been one of my favorite

sayings two things can be true at once moving into the world means responsibility it means

more complexity but it doesn't negate the fact that the precious things are the simple things.

And while we often spend our days fixated on distant horizons looking for those things,

I continuously find that they're often under our very feet, the ground we walk on.

...