I recognize I am a lucky guy. There are a lot of reasons this is true and this morning I was once again reminded of the fact. I got to take a couple of hours early this morning to go out to the beach near our home to go for a run. The beach is particularly restorative for me and when its pretty empty like it was this morning, I will extend a little while to walk and have my prayer and meditation time. As I was coming back to my car, I noticed some blackberry bushes along the path back from the beach and, as I looked closer, I saw a bunch of ripe berries hanging within a step or two from the path.

So there I am, standing there, looking at these totally fresh, fat, juicy berries, and wondering if it would be OK to pick them. It wasn’t really a property question, I was along a public access path. No, the real issue was whether they were safe to eat. Had they been sprayed with some cancer-linked herbicide or pesticide? Was the ground they were growing in contaminated with some water table pollutant?

I realized I would have felt much safer if they had been on a grocery store shelf or, even better, in a nice cardboard box after having been grown in some latin american country, dehydrated and irradiated, and even sprayed with some nice Vitamin C spray so I could make sure I was getting my necessary vitamin intake.

Haven’t we wandered a long way from the original garden? We often believe something to be true because we’ve been told it all our lives and no one has questioned it or really held it up for inspection. I think that’s what has happened to us in our quest to be healthy. We’ve reduced our natural tendencies to go out and play into a quest for the most efficient way to reach our goal of weight loss, body comp change, or fitness. We have reduced the joy of eating into a hard assessment of the comparable nutritional components of one food versus another. In the process, the most simple truths and the greatest freedom is right there in front of us but we are too suspicious. It can’t be that easy.

Actually it really is. Take some time today to go play. If you need a refresher, go slide down a sliding board or swing in a swing. Plan to go to a farmer’s market this weekend to see food that still has some dirt on it. Soak up some sun (it will increase your Vitamin D). By the way, the berries were delicious and they didn’t even make it back to my car.