The Importance Of Walking

Walking

Good morning. Today, I want to talk about walking. Walking, for most of us, is such a simple act—we do it everyday, without even thinking about it. You’ve all walked here to the chapel, of course, and many of us who take the Kintestsu train here (including me), everyday we walk past the rice fields and vegetable fields of Koudo, across the train tracks and up the hill to the campus. So, walking is something we do everyday. But—for something so simple—I think walking can be a very positive activity, both psychologically and intellectually.

What do I mean by walking? Well, first there is the simple physical act of walking. Your muscles tense. You raise one foot and bring it forward. The heel, then the ball of the foot, softly presses

The rhythm of walking, fairly naturally it seems to me, leads to a rhythm of thinking: with each step, new ideas and old memories come to the surface and can be freely considered, also worries and anxieties can be acknowledged and worked through. Walking—fairly unusually in our modern world—allows time to think freely, without direction, without a particular destination in mind. When we walk, we can think without worrying about targets or deadlines or producing something. When we walk, our thoughts—like our legs— can take us

They talk about walking much more eloquently than I can, of course. So, let me just read a few quotations. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the c18 writer and philosopher, said that “I can only meditate [think] when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.” [pause] Another quote. Wallace Stevens, the great American poet, wrote in one of his poems that “In my room, the world is beyond my imagination; / But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud”—for Stevens, walking is a way to connect with the world, to see for himself what is in the world. [pause]. One last quotation. Bruce Chatwin, a famous British travel writer, said that walking was essential for our education, our growth, and our happiness: “Children need paths to explore, to take bearings on the earth on which they live. If we excavate the memories of childhood, we remember the paths first—paths down the garden, the way to school, the way round the house, corridors through the bracken or long grass.” For Chatwin, walking educates us about the world and our place within it.

So, there are lots of people who agree on the importance of walking. [pause] Yet, in Japan and Europe, in the States and Australia or New Zealand, most of us are walking less and less. We take public transport or, more commonly, we drive. We stay inside buildings and rooms—homes, offices,