Walking Should Be Easy

Morning friend.

I’m writing this a couple of days after completing March of the Day III.

180 miles covered as a team over 60 hours.  

Walking constantly.  All day, all night.

Sacrificing a part of our today for someone else’s tomorrow.

Finding a cure for MND.

My legs and joints are still suffering underneath this desk and I feel a sense of deep exhaustion lurking somewhere inside.

When we weren’t walking, we were travelling to the next checkpoint in a minibus.

That bus became home.

One seat and one small bag each.

A few broken hours of sleep here and there.

In a world full of stuff it's amazing just how little we actually need.

That’s one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned from the charity campaigns and military operations I’ve been part of on sea and on land.

By the end of the walk, what stayed with me wasn’t the achievement.

It was how hard the simplest of things become when you stop respecting the foundations.

Walking is natural and it should be easy - until you ask the body to do it for hour after hour, day after day.

Then, suddenly hips tighten and feet blister.

Posture collapses and each next step hurts more than the last.

It shouldn’t feel like that walking to the shops or playing in the park with your child.

Yet people who spend most of their life seated do.

Later in life they start discovering muscles and joints they forgot existed years ago.

It struck me more than once on those long walks just how strange modern life really is.

Human beings evolved to move.

Yet many people now struggle with the very thing their body was built to do.

The same thing is happening with sleep.

I’ve operated sleep deprived many times before.

On the ocean, on operations and as a parent.

You can almost watch the decline of yourself and others happening in real time.

Patience shortens first.

Then decision making.

Then mood.

Eventually everything starts to feel heavier than it really is and the tears arrive for no reason.

And yet so many people live like this every day without questioning it.

Running on caffeine after five hours of sleep.

Scrolling late into the night and wondering why they feel flat, anxious or disconnected from themselves the next morning.

If sleep wasn’t important, evolution would have removed the requirement for it long ago.

You don’t ‘sleep when you’re dead’, you die sooner because you didn't value sleep.

Most of the food available to us during the march was convenience food.

Quick calories between stages just to keep moving.

Two hot meals in three days.

After a while you notice the difference.

Energy drops and recovery slows.

Your body stops cooperating properly.

Nothing dramatic.

Just a gradual deterioration.

A quiet reminder that foundations matter whether we acknowledge them or not.

But what I’ll remember most from the March wasn’t the discomfort.

It was the people.

Someone you’ve never met handing over their last sweets to another person who was struggling.

Someone walking beside a teammate in silence because they knew they were hurting and they just needed quiet company.

Someone staying positive late into the night when everyone was cold, wet and exhausted.

The small things.

But small things become very important when conditions get difficult.

It reminded me that human beings can endure remarkable hardship when suffering is shared.

Perhaps that’s one of our most important foundations too.

Not toughness or motivation or resilience.

Togetherness.

And that no matter how advanced we become as individuals or as a society, the body and soul still demands what it always has.

Rest.
Movement.
Proper food.
Connection.
Laughter.

Not quick fixes.

Not false promises.

Not another shortcut.

Not Ai.

Not more algorithms.

Just the things that make us human.

Before we go any further, let’s debrief together:

Where in your life have you drifted away from the basics whilst still expecting yourself to perform well?

What have you been neglecting that your body, mind or family has quietly been asking you for?

This week’s mission (if you choose to accept it):

Stop searching for a more advanced answer.

Go back to the foundations instead.

Sleep longer.
Walk more.
Eat better.
Call someone you care about.

Then repeat it again next week.

That’s enough for now.

More next Sunday.

Mike

Hold the Line · Do the Hard Things