On Walking
Walking is under-appreciated. I suspect we overlook the full value of this simple action due to its commonality and ever-present nature. The basic act of putting one foot in front of the other is different from all other modes of transport. Not everybody on this planet owns a car or knows how to swim, but almost all humans can walk from a young age. The activity is something we all have in common, a shared experience which unites us all.
There’s another attractive feature of walking — it’s slow. Other than crawling, I can’t think of a slower method of human propulsion. To me, this isn’t a problem; this is a solution. If you want to get somewhere fast, drive. If you need to think, take a walk. My best ideas come to me on foot, and this is also the method I use most often to solve hard problems.
I walk to see the big picture, allowing my mind to brush aside the veil of life’s trivialities and expose what’s most significant to me. As a matter of proof, I wrote this piece while walking. Naturally, I typed it out on my laptop, but I wrote it in my head during a walk. I composed the story while quietly ambling aimlessly down the remote rural road behind my house, eyes closed. The smell of the forest and the feel of the crisp winter breeze on my face provided the inspiration I needed. While I prefer to roam in the mountains, the benefits of walking can be recognized anywhere. Discover the locale that resonates the most with you, go there, and treasure the pace of life on foot.
Walking helps us in a multitude of ways, and you don’t have to take just my word for it. I’m certainly not the first person to extol its virtues. Thoreau famously authored a 12,000-word essay on the topic. Maria Popova describes walking as “creative fuel,” and the artist Austin Kleon has repeatedly written about its advantages. Multiple studies have proved the worth of the activity, and googling “benefits of walking” yields over fifteen million results.
In today’s “cult of busy,” productivity is put on a high pedestal. Being productive is admirable, but if you find yourself feeling proud of just being busy, it might be a wise idea to step back and think about that a bit. If I told you to drop what you’re doing at this very moment and go for a walk, you’d probably reply that you don’t have time. This is backward thinking. Walking does not take time; walking gives time. It accomplishes this by allowing for clarity of mind, a trait which fuels creativity and efficiency. Slowing down and focusing on what’s important is the path to brilliant work, whether in art, science, or any craft of hand or mind. You can prove this to yourself right now by putting your shoes on, heading outside, and pondering this idea while you go for a nice, slow walk. If you’re not too busy, that is.
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