I read an article this morning about walking. It was reasonably interesting and revolved around some of the greatest minds of the past two hundred years being avid walkers. Henry David Thoreau, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf, Arthur Rimbaud and Mahatma Gandhi apparently all loved a good walk and it wasn’t suggested that their achievements were down to their ability to walk but did suggest there was a link between their understanding of being able to put down the pen and getting the blood flowing with a stroll. This is by no means a new revelation, anyone who has sat in front of a screen or studied for too long has felt heavy, groggy and the necessity of movement to make them feel alive again. The point the article attempted to make was that in this day and age in which there needs to be a purpose behind everything we do; we have simply forgotten the art of simply existing. There is something cleansing about simply being in a moment of purposeless purpose that we cannot get when we’re walking from A to B to either count the steps it’s taken us to get there or because any other method of movement is not possible. The relation to Sisyphus in our effort to get to B before discovering we almost immediately need to get on to C and then D afterwards.
However it does neglect to mention that these great minds most likely understood the benefit of taking time for a stroll for their minds and the furthering of ideas they had perhaps started to stagnate on. To imagine while walking they weren’t thinking through various angles to problems is to misunderstand the mind. In that case it is quite easy to suggest they were never strolling for the sake of it existence in that moment because there was a purpose behind it, even if that was just to clear their mind there was purpose. We may live in an age were everything needs a purpose that can be monetised, and while that is soon to be found out as flawed over the next few months, that doesn’t mean people simply existed previously. Perhaps we just don’t know how to relate to the workings of their alien thought process and minds.
Saying all of that though it is entirely acceptable to suggest we could do with a little more strolling in life. To experience life for the sake of mere existence. How that can relate to people being stuck inside their homes in quarantine I’m unsure but I suspect there may just be a new age of appreciation for the simple art of walking as people find satisfaction once more in the stroll. Any excuse for getting out of the house and absorbing a bit of vitamin D. Don’t forget the two metres of course.
Observations and Misunderstandings 