Posts Tagged ‘walking’

Why walk?

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

I was out today tramping through mud, rain and leaf mulch.  It was the was the wettest day of the year for us so far.  You might ask why bother?  What is the point in getting soaked and marching through the mire just to end up (hopefully!) back where you start from?  There are, of course, a series of reasons.  It is good, healthy exercise.  We have committed to do it and if you only do so when you feel like it, then it quickly becomes a sporadic activity rather than a regular one.  There  the challenge of navigating the route and the physical demands of the walk too.  There’s unquestionably a sense of gratification in succeeding in doing all of this, as well as the pleasure of all that you see along the way.  And yet, it is odd to to spend all day working at something to end up back where you begun.

I’m a great believer in ‘The Journey’, the journey of Life, and find the metaphor of a walk very appealing and resonant with this bigger journey.  Perhaps when we are feeling stuck on our bigger journey, a walk is a way creating a sense of freedom, progress and movement, and can ‘unstick’ us.  It enables us to see things from many perspectives and angles.

Are there other activities that you find have a metaphorical value for you? 

I”f you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking.  Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.”  Raymond Inmon

“Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”  Henry David Thoreau

 

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Busy doing NOthing

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

Yesterday I was writing about the importance of sometimes allowing yourself to do nothing, and I really did take my own advice. One reader thought that I was advocating never moving into action, which is certainly not the case. It is more like night and day, where you swing from one natural phase to the next and then back again.

So, back to yesterday…. Having finished writing, and having dealt with a very welcome business call that delayed me still further, I looked out of the window and my sunny day had vanished… only to be replaced with grey and wet! None-the-less, I was off to the woods to test out my new satnav1 system and see if I could navigate round some places I really didn’t know. I have mentioned before that I love ‘exploring,’ which for me, is going places I don’t know, even (and sometimes, especially) if they are close to places I do know.

So I took myself off to some woods & heath not too far from here and surrendered myself to the unknown. I was on my own so there were no distractions. During the course of my walk which last about 2.5 hours we had every kind of weather from sun to hail. I was moving at a fair clip so by the end I was pretty tired.

However, and here is the point of my ramble about rambling, all this time I was very active, but on another level, fitting into my ‘nothingness’ mode. I had no work to do, no purpose other than to open myself up to my surroundings and experiences. I won’t be so arrogant as to claim it was a ‘zenlike state’ but it was a very English version of that.

By letting go of the focus control and just allowing ourselves to notice what we notice, by going somewhere new and surrendering control, by being open to getting lost we can find so much. So if you are not sure what to do about something, perhaps you should put Nothing on your menu…

“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing” Aristotle

“Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing” Lao Tzu

“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself” Zen Proverb

Resources:

  2. Bing Crosby is busy doing nothing
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An unexpected gift

Friday, March 28th, 2008

One of my great loves is walking, and I am lucky enough to share this with a good friend, who makes time every week to be lead off into the wilds of South England. I try to keep finding new places to visit, but obviously we revisit old favourites to enjoy them again, in all their different seasons and aspects. Sometimes we are pushed for time and just have to stay close to home, which in reality, is no hardship as we have some of the most beautiful countryside in the world right here.

Yesterday was such a day and I was taking us back to an old and special favourite of mine up on Puttenham CommonÂŒ. Now, despite this being a place that I love, a little bit of me was disappointed not to be going ‘somewhere new’. There is a strong vestige of the little boy still in me that loves to go off and explore.

We set off with a new GPS I had been given for Xmas because I needed to check it out as it had been faulty. I’d programmed in a route, solely from a map and wasn’t sure how much of this route I would actually be familiar with. I knew the area well enough that I’d be able to get back if I or the less-than-reliable GPS got us lost!

So off went the intrepid pair, following the little line of electronic dots on the virtual map. We quite quickly diverged from my favourite route and initially it was a little dull, we were on a ‘green road’ rather than just off in the wild. However, we tramped on enjoying the views and each others conversation. Little by little, we got to areas I had never seen before, and they just got prettier and prettier. We had a wonderful time, in a beautiful place, under blue, blue skies.

The lesson for me was that we can find wonderful surprises in places (and people) that we think we know. When we surrender a little of our usually tight control we open the door to all sorts of wonderful gifts. So today, my gift you is the chance for you to enjoy a similar wonderful surprise in something or someone familiar.

“Be ready to be surprised” Loeje (a dutch fictional character)
“Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

 

Resources:

  1. Puttenham on Google
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