All it takes is for other things to overpower this feeling. There are some days when I have a hard time leaving the house. What I feel then is that there are people outside, and their presence and stare and their perfectly friendly greetings feel like a performance in front of a huge audience. I also have a burning feeling inside, like what I have in my eyes when staring into the summer sun. I can bare it for some seconds, but it's really unpleasant, and while it's happening, I can't think about much else than to just flee from it. These strong, acute feelings make it hard to appreciate the subtle joys of the outside world, so I stay inside.

I have a good therapist so these are not huge issues anymore, but I wanted to share the experience. That it really is just a question of incentives.

you could just open the window to get fresh air, and simulate, via treadmill, the hiking!

I don't think you can simulate an experience, in a way that it ends up being profound. Reality is always more complex than our understanding, because understanding works by selecting, limiting information. So what these simulations often end up with is an incomplete, hollow imitation of the real thing, often missing a key ingredient yet to be identified. The efforts in human nutrition is a good example of this, always discovering something that was crucially missing from diets.

Simulations work for some, though. But they don't work for others, and this is what I wanted to hopefully make a bit more understandable.

Great idea if you want to get someone very depressed. Humans do need to go outside and touch grass from time to time.

humans are already becoming more and more depressed. Makes little difference at this point.

We had very strict Covid restrictions in my country (France) back when it started. Going outside for anything other than walking the dog was complicated, you had to sign a form that said that it was an absolute emergency. Yet, some of my friends told me that those few months were among the best of their life. Some of us really don't need to go outside to feel fulfillment, just the confort of their home.

I spent two years not going outside during this time and I honestly wish it never ended. It was absolutely the best time.

You don't get fresh air in cities. It's different to deeply breathe in air on a trail surrounded by trees with no cars in sight than to stand on the balcony and breathe in the contaminated air of even smaller cities.

I used to only go out to do grocery shopping, but then I started exercising by cycling, and now, when I don't get out near the woods for three days, I get a real crisis. After breathing in fresh air for 30 mins or so I feel much, much better.

Some of us vastly prefer being indoors to out. In most places on Earth, I find being outdoors to be intolerable at any time of day/season.

Part of it is my general disdain for humidity, bright light, and temperature excursions. I hate being too cold or too hot, and the sun is almost always far too bright for me. I can’t imagine wanting to go outdoors or preferring it to being indoors, with the single exception of the mojave desert at night in the summer.

I wish I could live deep underground, or in space.