Walks

I’ve been taking a lot of walks recently- exploring the neighborhood, trudging through woody trails and around the corners of my mind. Most of them I’ve ventured into alone, some I had the (six feet apart) company of strangers on their own journey and few with pleasant company. 

In pre-pandemic times, I was constantly inundated day to day- always stimulated by the environment I was in. My typical day would consist of classes and lab work, both of them requiring constant attention and work. By the end of the day, all I had energy for was a lazy dinner and a re-watch of The Office. I didn’t have time to step back and get some perspective on myself, and broadly, the world around me. I enjoyed not having time to think about anything else- potentially as a coping mechanism. Working from home, though, totally foiled this strategy. All the pent-up energy had to be exhausted and without distractions or things to do, a studio apartment can be an intimidating place to be alone with your thoughts. So, I headed out, onto the roads, and started walking to escape my thoughts. 

Ironically, once I ran out of true crime podcasts to listen to, the walks led to “casual” conversations with myself. I was noticing things in life that were beyond my control, external influences that we often ignore and realized why some things function a certain way. This was the gateway drug into more introspection- realizations that I link self-worth to work, how I constantly put myself down and learning about how I view the people around me. I thought I was making personal strides- literally and metaphorically. On the flip side, I was now thinking about what I had been actively avoiding: the future, what my contribution would be and if I could even make a difference. Now, I was in a different kind of rut- persistently asking “what is life?”- a question that was impossible to answer. Walking in circles around my mind didn’t lead to new revelations and was exhausting. I couldn’t find a mute button in my mind, so I went to hike with an audiobook in tow to drain out my thoughts. The trail was beautiful- but I wasn’t looking up to enjoy the nature around me; the stark contrast between the lush green carpets and the ragged brown soil underneath, the petrichor after last night’s rain and the small streams that peppered the trail. Instead, all I could think of was how muddy the trail was and what would happen if I fell down and rolled my ankle. My mind kept going to “this is how a serial killer movie begins”. By the end of the hike, it triggered more unanswerable questions that then spiraled out of control. 

A walk with my friend and her kids changed things up: they were continuously fascinated by everything around them. Purple flowers? Yes. Wooden owls? Yes. Bees? Yes. Wooden sticks that looked like sevens? Yes. Everything in their field of view excited them. Maybe they had a story behind everything, or sometimes even a song. I stood there, realizing that I hadn’t felt this way about the world around me in a while, and how enjoyable that had felt when I was a kid. I could play with sand for hours and hours together, conjuring characters and stories and not constantly going down existential rabbit-holes. When I got home, I felt happy and beyond anything, hopeful. Maybe someday soon, I will be excited and inspired by the world around me too. Someday soon, I hope to deal with these thoughts instead of shoving them under the carpet or letting them become bigger than me. Ultimately, this was a two-month long walk in the larger journey of life- a super cheesy yet somewhat apt metaphor. And I’m looking forward to taking more of them.