The ancient art of walking
The ancient art of walking
Get up and go for an actual walk
Do you walk?
I do. I track about 10 to 15,000 steps a day. I wake up at 5:02 am each weekday, have my first cup of coffee, then go for a walk. It’s a habit I don’t want to give up.
Writers like to talk about walking almost as much as they write coffee consumption into their characters’ worlds. (Forgive us).
Some of my favourite writers are known for walking.
Annie Dillard places the narrator of her Pulitzer prize winner on the banks of Tinker Creek, walking through the daily violence and wonder of creation. (I quote her too often, I know).
A much repeated anecdote, now lore, about G.K. Chesterton has him walking absentmindedly, lost in thought. He sent a telegram to his wife: "Am in Market Harborough. Where should I be?" Her one-word reply (which, some report she sent throughout his writing life): Home.
Famous philosophers like Aristotle and Kierkegaard, much-quoted thinkers like Thoreau, culture-shaping composers like Beethoven, ground-breaking writers like Woolf and product innovators like Steve Jobs famously walked to get their ideas.
My favourite moments in scripture take place on walks: Moses in the desert encountering the burning bush (my brother Dan reminded me of this passage in his great post this week); the two hollowed out, grief-filled men on the road to Emmaus; Ruth on the road with Naomi; Peter walking on water like his master.
The science tells us to walk.
Science, of course, has made the case for the benefits of walking. A recent Harvard report primes patients to expect their doctors to prescribe walking as the magic pill for health since it’s proven to:
Counteract the effects of weight-promoting genes
Reduce cravings for sweet foods
Blunt the risk of breast cancer
Protect joints and reduce joint pain
Boost the immune system (and help people in cold and flu season)
But you’re not here for health advice. (Are you?)
Step by step
It’s more and more engrained in the popular culture to hit 10k steps each day. Apparently a marketing campaign released in Japan in 19641 was the inception point for this idea, but a step goal isn’t my main reason for daily ambles.
Walking brings clarity, creativity, and—dare I say—hope.
In a world filled with so many voices, so much marketing, so many notifications and meetings and emails, getting up from the desk and walking is an absolute anchor to mental clarity. It nurtures and stimulates imagination.
It re-contextualizes reality.
When I walk, I and my experiences become small again in the enormous complexity of the created world. I'm almost always reconnected to a sense of my self, my purpose and loop into a creative idea or strategy during or after a walk.
Walking is the great creation lab for ideas. And the science backs this up too. A study released by Stanford showed that walking increased creative output by at least 60% when a person walked (whether in nature or on a treadmill).
I may have little to add to the canon of writing about walking, other than to say, Leave your actual desk (or couch) and walk.
It'll do you and your world so much good.
Walk over to that like button and hit it up! Thanks for reading and journeying with me.
Post script - Define “Walking”
I was fascinated this morning to look up the definition for the word. Take a guess at how many ways the word walk is described in the dictionary:
Here’s an interesting article about the marketing of the Manpo-Kei pedometer during the Tokyo Olympics that is the inception point for the 10,000 steps phenomenon.