This thought originally popped into my head when I was encouraging myself to finally do some gardening. I feel I should clarify that in my case gardening is not a genteel pursuit, I am not Miss Marple calmly dead-heading my roses whilst solving a murder. For me gardening is about going on the attack, ripping down ivy or hacking back bramble. So I need to be both mentally & physically ready and often it is far easier to avoid it, to say it looks like it’s about to rain or I don’t have the energy to do all that needs to be done. Which is when I need to remind myself that something is better than nothing. Even if I just go out for 20 minutes and pull up the weeds from the patio, well that’s something and it will look better than it did before. By no means perfect but still an improvement. I guess that’s the other title I could have used:

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

The idea that unless you can do something perfectly then there is no point doing it at all is rarely helpful. I was going to say never but there are some jobs that really do need to be done perfectly, if I ever need a brain surgeon then I would like that person to be a perfectionist! But for the vast majority of us going about our day-to-day lives we should try to resist using the pursuit of perfection as an excuse to not attempt something. I know this is easier said than done, I mean if it was easy then I wouldn’t need to remind myself and I wouldn’t be making a post out of it.

Generally speaking getting started is the hardest bit, and while I’m not going to claim that accepting that something is better than nothing is going to miraculously lead to you achieving perfection I will say that you are likely to surprise yourself if you just give it a go. When I persuade myself to at least do a little bit of work in the garden, I usually end up not only doing more than my minimum acceptable amount but finding the fun as well. Last time I went out I was aiming for 30 minutes of activity and I think it was 90 or maybe even a couple of hours. While my gardening is not genteel, it can still be therapeutic – ripping ivy off the wall is a marvellous way to channel the anger that has been building up over the working week.

Wait a minute though, isn’t this supposed to be a blog about walking? I am on Soothing Strolls still and not Grumpy Gardening? Yes yes this is still a walking blog, I was just using gardening as an example but the same is true of walking. I guess the distinction here is that I rarely need to talk myself into going for a walk whereas there is always a certain amount of mental cajoling involved before I attack the garden. But something is better than nothing is still applicable as there have been plenty of times when I have had a day with no plans & a reasonable forecast where I’ve initially thought I would go for a longer walk. I’ll have a destination or a route in mind and that will be my plan. Then the day arrives and perhaps the weather is not as encouraging or I’m slow to get moving or perhaps I’m just not in the mood.

Whatever the reason at this stage it would be all too easy to think: well I’m not going to be able to reach the destination I originally had in mind therefore what’s the point? If I can’t do the walk I had intended to do then I might as well just read a book, watch Murder She Wrote or play a lap on Mario Kart instead. And don’t get me wrong these are all acceptable alternatives and there will be days when I genuinely want to forget about walking and do one or all of those things instead. However there are also times when just because I don’t think I can do the long walk that I had originally planned, I still want to go for a walk. When something is better than nothing.

On these days I will go for a walk around the local park so I still get some fresh air, connect with nature and stretch my legs. Sometimes though just getting out of the house was the hurdle and so I’ll end up still doing a long walk, possibly the one I had originally aimed to do, sometimes an alternative one perhaps an even longer one. I guess this is my convoluted way of once again trying to explain why I don’t personally like counting steps or logging miles when I go for a walk. I fear number-crunching is akin to pursuing perfection. If I aim to hit a certain number of steps or miles on every walk then there will be days when I think I’m not going to hit the target, so I won’t bother leaving the house. In my mind the pursuit of the target is the enemy of doing something. Yes that is a terrible mangling of two phrases but hopefully you catch my drift. If you have a set target in mind then I feel it is harder to accept that something is better than nothing. If I aim to do 10,000 steps but feel like I can only achieve 3,000 then it’s easier to say I won’t bother doing any. Whereas simply saying I don’t have the time or energy for a long walk but I’ll still do a short one seems more acceptable.

What’s my point here? I guess with walking, as with any hobby, try not to let it become a chore, just another thing that you have to do. Walking is meant to be an escape from all of the must-dos in life, so accept there will be times when you don’t want to walk but also accept that there will be times when something is better than nothing. You may not want to walk as far as you did on your last walk or as far as you had originally hoped or planned to but that’s ok, because more often than not you’ll find that something is better than nothing.

That’s how I stroll.

PS. Is post-script obsolete in the digital age? If I have thought of an additional point then surely I can just add it into the body text without the need for a PS? But I like a PS so I’m going with it, although this musing means that I now need a PPS…

PPS. I want to acknowledge the fact that today is the last day of Mental Health Awareness Week and I think it makes perfect sense that this week falls in May. May is National Walking Month (#WalkThisMay) and while walking is good for your physical health, in my opinion, it is vital for your mental health. Whether it’s self-reflection on a solo stroll or making connections and talking on a walk with a loved one, it is a useful tool for maintaining a sense of well-being. As a wise woman once said (me!): Soothing Strolls are good for the soul.

That’s how I stroll (again).