Five-year old me in the barn: I would be alone in the barn sweeping, struggling to push the broom; after five hours the barn would be clean. I had nothing to do but sweep the barn; nothing to worry about, nothing to study, nothing to research, nothing to plan. I just needed to sweep the barn. I would focus on the ground. Focus on properly stroking the ground with each sweep. My small muscles would ache in pain. The cold concrete ground layered with dirt and horse feed slowly came together; the dust, the hay, and all the materials on the ground would pile up as I pushed the broom back and forth.
Although sweeping may seem like a chore, or a job I surprisingly miss it. I miss the simplicity of my five-year old self taking hours to sweep a 100meter long barn.
Now, I go to the barn and can sweep the entire hallway in 20min tops. I don’t take the time to look at every detail of sweeping, because I don’t have that kind of time…but why? Why am I all a sudden in a rush? Where do I need to be, what is scheduled next that is taking away from sweeping? When did I choose to grow up? Where did time go?
I can remember like it was yesterday the feeling of struggling to sweep a piece of hay into the waste bucket. I visually remember the hours I spent in the cold trying to get the barn as clean as possible. But I don’t do that anymore; I don’t take the time to sweep like I did when I was five, and I know that I never will.
Growing up is a part of life, I know that, we all do. But it can be hard. I no longer go into the barn with no worries. I am constantly thinking about something. If I am sweeping, yes I still find peace in it, but my focus is no longer on the broom, it’s on everything going on in my life. I no longer watch the dust disappear from the hard concrete ground, I think about something else. Sweeping has become second nature to me. Like many things in life, we tend to rush through things. But thinking back to my childhood I was never in a rush. I took each step with great care, watched each stroke of the broom pick up the dust from the ground, and lived each second at a time.
Cleaning the barn was a daily routine for me, and like all routines I improved from doing it every day. Maybe sweeping the barn is not the same as it used to be for me, and in some ways I miss the simplicity of it, but I also appreciate the time I had in the barn to grow as a person. I swept the barn for 10+ years and each year I got better, each year I grew, but the broom would always be there when I came back to clean.
This post was very well written and relatable. As adults, we are always thinking about the future and our minds are packed with plans and worry. I miss the days when all I had to think about was the one task I was occupying myself with in that moment, similarly to you with sweeping the barn. We can still find many ways to relax and keep our brains occupied, but unfortunately it would be very hard to go back to how calm our minds were when we were children.
I really enjoyed reading this post. I miss the times when we were much younger, and each task was a new challenge to be handled with diligence and meticulous care. In some ways, life back then was simple, yet extraordinarily complex. You were able to capture your five year old self and reflect on your experiences as an adult, which really helped transport me, as a reader, to the scene of you sweeping the barn. I appreciated the relatability of this post – even though it discussed horse riding, which I’m personally not familiar with – and I’m looking forward to reading your work in the future.