Observational walks are essentially extrovert. I see the things around me with a photographer’s eye for detail and the capacity to take in the broad sweep of the vista. I respond to the shapes and colours of everything from a leaf, to a hill, to a cloud in the sky. Sometimes I marvel at it all and feel energised.
At other times a walk takes on a wholly different function. When the cares are settling in, the anxieties pressing heavy, and certain old frailties reminding me that growth can be limited, a walk finds out the introverted side of me. It encourages reflection and introspection. The landscape almost disappears; there is only me and the road I’m walking on. I think a duckbilled platypus could toddle by and I wouldn’t notice.
I often come to tentative conclusions in that situation (can conclusions ever be more than tentative?) but I rarely make decisions. The problem with decisions is that they usually require some future action, and who can know how things might have changed by the time that future arrives?
2 comments:
I always take walks when something is bothering me. I guess it calms my mind, because the lndscape transports me to some place quiet and far away, yet not far enough to forget my problems. I ponder over my problems there. But the problem with that is that it is easier to be alone with your thoughts that to actually PUT it into action. and obviously, by then time you leave that private realm, where everything works out your way, the real world isnt really as easy as that.
Hence only tentative conclusions. No decisions.
Post a Comment