Walking spurs Creativity, it connects us to our environment and neighborhood. it's important for me to walk the places i visit as a way to build an understanding of the culture and energy. This person finds similar benefits.
Walking builds independence in children and young adults because walking forces you to know where you are and to make decisions about where you're going.
last week, i bought Uncanny Valley two minutes after my bookstore called me to tell me they'd got it in stock. I had just walked past after getting lunch. This happenstance couldn't happen in a car. Or it'd be a bigger pain.
In walking, my son discovered a sense of ownership over his own life, a kind of self-determination that’s rare for a young child.
It's funny, I had this self-determination through most of my youth, I was trusted with getting home from school, less than a mile, but very rarely did i sway from it all the way through high school.
I have memory of when my first school crush lived six or whatever houses down from me, of her trying to invite me in to meet her mom and see her dog, i was dropping off a DVD of Animatrix that she she had loaned to a classmate. i ran back home cause i was afraid i would miss a call from my mom and she would ask me why i'd not been home.
it wasn't until high school that i willingly transgressed, and I was brought in to alignment by my parents, at least until I could leave home. my self determination from there brought me to HeatSync Labs and my eventually exit from Arizona State University and in to my current arc of adulthood.
what if i'd found that self-determination sooner? would the depression of my youth keep me from getting to the heights I achieved before I sputtered and flamed out in 2011 and again in 2016?
I’ve walked off sadness, anxiety, anger and fear, wandering until whatever dark emotion gripped me receded enough that I could place it in perspective. Depression in particular has lost its power. When that familiar numbness creeps through my fingers and heart, I force myself to step outside no matter the weather, to walk a little, even just to the mailbox. Not once has it failed to remind me that life is a beautiful, complex thing worth living.
ah to achieve this peace … some day.
there is power in this act of walking together, that we’re building something curiously resilient