Why strive? Why not just take what the universe gives you? Be thankful. Walk. Do not strive. Enjoy every breath.
That is how I want to begin this essay. That is how I want to end.
I don't know exactly when or why I started walking, but I remember clearly my friend Scott one day telling me that when he was in high school he started walking to heal his soul. I thought that was a wonderful idea. Later, I would learn that Steve Jobs would spend massive amounts of time walking. Why? He believed that it was the best way to think.
The last 10 years of my life have been walking years - wonderful walking years! Dianohara, Izumi Chuo, Outlet mall, Kujima Castle, the river and now the many beautiful places of Nagasaki. Through these walks, I've learned the power of non-ado, the gentleness of my own soul, the depth of my wandering mind. Through these walks, I've let trauma drip from my soul, fall off, and turn into curiosity. I've learned that there is a pace to striving, the pace of one gentle step after another.
I started walking in high school. Perhaps sooner. I was a bike rider for a little while but after the age of 31 or 32, my walking took on a new intensity. My mom and dad had passed. I seemed to be carrying the accumulated weight of years. Before the Corona pandemic, I would walk for three, four, five hours for no reason whatsoever. During Covid, my wandering mind wondered if the world (as I had known it) was coming to an end.
Dainohara, the nature park near my old apartment, cured me for a little while. Where do I walk these days? Sakinou Park, Kinkai...I dream. I dream about times past, about alternatives. Sometimes the future but not often about the future.
What is the point of this walking? To drown violent striving. Perhaps. On December 2, 2023, six days before my 42nd birthday, I take a walk around my neighborhood. The stars are bright, shiny, and absolutely perfect. The cold air makes me feel clean somehow. I feel as if I've washed away unnecessary emotions. I feel older, time displaced. Smartphone zombies remind me that I am not of this time, but instead from a kind of prelapsarian past. Although, if I remember my childhood correctly (the halcyon days of the 1980s and 1990s), we were somehow the broken generation (gang violence, AIDs, TV addiction, excessive venality). What will tomorrow bring as I contend with the smartphone zombies? Hopefully, it will bring more joyous days (on days like today, it is hard to complain about anything!). How does one have optimism about the future? Walking helps.
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Pure Writerly Moments 2 (Short Stories, Essays, Book Reviews, and More)
Ficção GeralWhat is the connection between artistic expression and the joy of living? How can one best live a literary life? This book is a collection of small word-projects. Each examines a book, a moment, a story that helps to deepen the author's literary adv...
