ELEVEN WALKING

Walk; Ponder

I think, therefore I am.

One never stops thinking. Even in a blank state of mind, there is still thought.

Walking’s connection to thinking is not only the physical rhythm it affords the mind, but also the interaction with the environment by the walker. In my walks, whether it be to a Sunday morning market or a spontaneous wandering of the still unfamiliar city I live in, I never stop thinking. My extended experience with thinking while walking, I must say, allowed me to grasp the stream-of-consciousness style of Rousseau’s Eighth Walk. 

In the Eighth Walk, Rousseau invites us into his mind as he pens down a state of solipsism in motion. 

His flow of thought is rhythmic and profuse. Rousseau's rumination is documented as though he was writing as he walked. 

What goes through one’s mind while walking? Rousseau seems to dissociate himself from the external environment entirely. His thoughts are entirely entangled in metaphysics instead the physical. I personally find it quite amazing for him to be able to do that as he walks in the beauty of Paris. 

For me, my thoughts, regardless of their content, will always be interrupted by my phenomenal encounters with the world around me. Perhaps Kierkegaard would share this sentiment; he seems to be quite affect by his surroundings too. Although Kierkegaard’s external factors were social, the “merciless campaign of mockery…tainted” his atmosphere. I have not been put in that circumstance yet, but I do identify with his statement: Curiosity surrounds me everywhere. And it is so that Kierkegaard was “Unable to break the habit of a lifetime…he continued to walk the streets,”

In my case, the seemingly turned-green-overnight trees in the Tuileries, Palais Royal or the Seine would interrupt any thought, profound or trivial, in my mind. Or if something in a boutique’s window catches my eye, my heart, body and mind will gravitate towards it. If that something succeeds in reducing the thickness of my wallet, my mind will find its way materialism by first telling myself what I just bought can be the last of its category in my collection of things. Then, I think about the amount of items in my ownership. Then I think about how I should keep my inventory to a minimum in light of material wastage. Then the environment and the implications of material consumption intrude my thoughts helplessly. And thus I descend into a spiral of metaphysical and normative questions — why should I care about the environment? What are my responsibilities towards the next generation of my species? What are the ethical implications of material consumption? What is the nature of ethics? Are ethics not self-serving or human-serving? Then we are selfish anyway, right? The questions go on, deeper and deeper.

You see, similar to Rousseau, whose series of philosophical think begins with raising questions then proceeding to dissect and answer them during his walk, I tend to have a similar procedure as well. I will not overestimate myself and believe that I am comparable to such an influential philosopher. I will not even dare to put the label of philosopher onto myself. It is far more difficult in the contemporary to choose “philosopher” as a professional title. However, what The Walker as Philosopher pointed out — that Rousseau was the “single and overriding exception” who had “laid the groundwork for the ideological edifice within which walking itself would be enshrined” — seems to be quite a fallible point. Not to show Rousseau any disrespect or discredit any of his philosophical contributions, I would like suggest that the contemplation framework that so many walkers (Bentham, Kant, Königsberg and Mill etc.) share on their journeys, is intuitive, not prescribed. 

So now I call to question the difference between walking in natural and urban settings (this jump simply occurred in the course of my walk; topic-hopping is a feature of thinking in motion). Thus far, walks in Paris are by nature, urban. Even those in the parks are constructed natural landscapes planned by the urban community. As I think back to walks in “true” natural settings I had taken before in Bhutan and China, I try to recall the thoughts I had. I thought about the earth beneath my feet as the mud stuck between my soles with each step onto the grass patches. I thought about those who live in the region and what their daily lives are like. I imagined myself living in the area and what would become meaningful to me in life. What then, would I pursue? How would I make meaning? Why does one seek meaning in life? Should I ever devote a chapter of my lifespan to such a lifestyle? Why do we only live once? Do we only live once? What are we? Do you notice the pattern of thought here? Once again, I descend into deeper questioning, without a plan, in a chaotic yet somehow ordered way. 

That is what walking affords us — freestyle thinking. One’s thought moves towards a certain direction. I would not call it progress, because that seems to suggest some sort of advancement, of improvement, which is not always the case. As walking translates into text, run-on sentences (as I have continuously spouted in this piece) surface onto paper (or a digital document). But walking’s greatest contribution to walker-philosophers do not stop here. Beyond propelling limitless, ruleless, unrestricted, unconstrained (these adjectives simply appeared with each step taken) thought with motion, walking is also, as Coverley states, “meditative”. Apart from bringing ideas to one’s mind, it also helps to clear or unclog tangled thoughts. How many times have we heard one curing writer’s block by walking it off? When drowning in a mess of emotions, one can imagine how walking would take one’s mind off the matter and somehow sort out and soothe the exhausted soul. In a wonderful way, walking displaces one from mental traps and allows the walker to re-confront the issues that plagued him or her before with refreshed clarity. 

The psychological benefits of walking nourish the intellectual and the emotional faculties. Of course, as a form of exercise it is quite advantageous for general health. Therefore, the “post-pedestrian” world conceived by Coverley does appear to be a terrifying scenario considering how valuable walking is to thought, to epistemology, and to physiological well-being. In more radical terms, an absence of walking could pose a kind of mind paralysis or dystrophy in which we no longer contemplate as profoundly or create as fluently.