Walking: walk more, think more deeply, discover more, connect with others and the planet, and live longer

I read a review of Erling Kagge’s short book—or meditation–on walking, called simply Walking, and bought it to read on our walk of the Yorkshire Wolds Way. https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2023/05/21/six-walk-the-yorkshire-wolds-way/  I’d never heard of Kagge and thought as I read the book that he must be a widely-read philosopher. I’ve now discovered that as well as being a philosopher he was the first person to reach the North Pole, South Pole and the summit of Mount Everest on foot. He describes as well in the book a walk across Los Angeles and through the sewers of New York (much of the “walk” was a crawl, in shit, toilet paper, and condoms.)

Th book is filled with fragments, material Kagge has gathered over years. The message that came through most clearly to me is that the more you walk the more human you become. The many quotes that I’ve taken below show how walking promotes discovery, thinking, connection to others, nature, and the planet, saudade (see below), leadership, and the health and wellbeing of both ourselves, our communities, and the planet.

If we all walked more and drove less the world would be a better place.

Walking and discovery

Learning to walk may be the most perilous undertaking of our lives.

When I observe a child learning to walk, it feels as if the joy of exploration and mastery is the most powerful thing in the world. Placing one foot in front of the other, investigating and overcoming are intrinsic to our nature. Journeys of discovery are not something you start doing, but something you gradually stop doing.

Walking and silence

All my walks have been different, but looking back I see one common denominator: inner silence. Walking and silence belong together. Silence is as abstract as walking is concrete.

Walking and time

And this is precisely the secret held by all those who go by foot: life is prolonged when you walk. Walking expands time rather than collapses it.

So much in our lives is fast-paced. Walking is a slow undertaking. It is among the most radical things you can do.

Past and future have no role as you walk.

The first philosopher we know by name within Mahāyāna Buddhism, Nāgārjuna, believed that time or ‘the three times’ (trikāla) do not exist, but are instead a hoax. That which has passed is over; that which has not yet passed has not yet begun; and that which we are walking, in this moment, constitutes infinitely small spaces between the passed and the not-yet-passed, and therefore the present also does not exist.

Walking and longing and saudade

Walking as a combination of movement, humility, balance, curiosity, smell, sound, light and – if you walk far enough – longing. A feeling which reaches for something, without finding it. The Portuguese and Brazilians have an untranslatable word for this longing: saudade. It is a word that encompasses love, pain and happiness. It can be the thought of something joyful that disturbs you, or something disturbing that brings you plenitude.

In school, I learned that the spiritual was the opposite of the material, but in the woods these two are not opposites – they are equals. To walk reflects this.

Walking and other people

How oft, amid those overflowing streets,

Have I gone forward with the crowd,

and said unto myself, ‘The face of every one

That passes by me is a mystery!’

William Wordsworth

Though you might be able to glean a lot of information from reading, listening at meetings, looking out of car windows, and peering down from your skyscraper, everything appears different if you walk along the streets where the citizens are gathering their own food for cooking, opening a shop, checking their phones, loving, reading, conversing and thinking.

Walking and thinking

Each of us possesses elements of beauty, idiocy, intelligence, goodness, evil, weakness, strength, optimism and pessimism; we all go through the trials of winning and losing.

‘The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow,’ cHenry David Thoreau

There is a thrill to not knowing what you may encounter as you walk. Your thoughts become more restricted. No one who wants to get hold of you knows where to find you. You are not living vicariously through other people. For one fleeting moment you can forget the rest of the world.

Walking your path

This is your path.

Only you will take it.

And there’s no turning back.

Olav H Hauge

As you walk, your way closes,

and when you look back

you see the path which your feet

never more will tread.

Antonio Machado

Walking and health

I was curious and asked agdi Yacoub what he had learned from studying thousands of beating human hearts. Yacoub replied, without much ado: ‘Go for a walk every day.’ He assured me that this advice would never grow outdated.

Hippocrates…warned against being incorrectly medicated and emphasized that no medication could have such a broad effect as simply putting one foot in front of the other.

‘Walking is man’s best medicine.’

I believe that walking has played a much more meaningful role in human health than all of the medicines that have been consumed throughout history.

‘If you are in a bad mood, go for a walk. And if you are still in a bad mood: Go for another walk.’ Hippocrates

For Arne Næss, happiness had to do with glow – by which he meant fervour or passion – and pain. He distinguished between bodily and mental pain.

W =   __G²__

         P_b +P_m

W = well-being, G = glow (joy/fervour), P = pain, b = bodily, m = mental. Næss emphasized that G can be increased to whatever exponent you wish. This gives the equation a rather optimistic quality.

NB. Increasing glow (perhaps by walking) will have more impact than trying to reduce pain.

To take a walk through nature, and find a quiet place to lie down when I am tired – this is one of the most delightful things one can experience. To look up at the trees that rise up around me, to simply relax. In Japan, they gave a name to this in 1982: shinrin-yoku, which means ‘forest bathing’. A therapy – forest therapy – to help calm one’s nerves.

Henry David Thoreau described shinrin-yoku in his book Walking, 151 years before the expression was penned: ‘I think I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.’

‘Above all, do not lose your desire to walk; every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness… and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.’

Søren Kierkegaard

[Any walk is] about finding peace as you walk, leaving your problems at home, becoming a part of your surroundings, and being content to take one step at a time.

Feelings of well-being are never infinite; they continuously have to be supplemented in order to continue.

What I like most of all is to walk until I nearly collapse. To sense the pleasure, the exhaustion and the absurdity of walking all blending together, until I can no longer tell what is what. My head changes. I don’t care what time it is, my head is devoid of all thought, and I become a part of the grass, the stones, the moss, the flowers and the horizon.

The longer I walk, the less I differentiate between my body, my mind and my surroundings. The external and internal worlds overlap. I am no longer an observer looking at nature, but the entirety of my body is involved.

Walking and behaviour

The most sensible thing that you can do if you are angry – a condition where our reptilian brain rules our decisions – is to walk for a while away from the object of your anger.

Walking (or rather sitting) and consumption

The modern world is fashioned so that we sit as often as possible. Sitting is about the desire of those in power that we should participate in growing the GDP, as well as the corporate desire that we should consume as much as possible and rest whenever we aren’t doing so. Our movements should be brief and effective. In the Stone Age, an adult human being went through 4,000 calories per day in order to cover the energy required to eat, to make tools and clothing, and to walk. Today, an average human being living in a rich country consumes, directly or indirectly, 228,000 calories a day, on goods such as food, clothing, communication and transport. The consumption of energy has become a full-time occupation, making it difficult to set aside time for walking more than just a few steps in a row.

Walking and leadership

The greater the physical distance between the decision makers and those affected by the decisions, the less relevant the decisions appear to the people impacted by them.

Walking and achievement

It’s pointless to ride to the top of a mountain in a car or helicopter instead of hiking or climbing up, because the experience of standing on the summit is superficial if no pain was involved.

Walking and weather

To take walks in fair weather alone – remaining indoors during wind, rain or snow – is to forego half of the experience.

Walking and man’s future

Walking made it possible for us to become who we are, so if we hardly ever walk, we may become something else.

And….

We have a saying in Norwegian: Much wants more.