I like walking. It’s great exercise but that’s not why I walk. Exercise in and of itself has never been a great motivator for me. I love the freedom of walking, particularly of walking alone.
A great deal has been said and written about freedom of late. Some of it I agree with but some, perhaps most though I’ve never really calculated it, I don’t. It seems to me that freedom is a word too often used as a socially-acceptable guise for desires which are emphatically socially-unacceptable. But I digress; that is not what this diary is about.
The freedom of walking alone is in the little things like being able to burp loudly and fart happily without disturbing any fellow human beings (provided you’re not in a crowd of course but then, I choose my routes carefully in order to avoid crowds).
The freedom of walking alone is also in the bigger things. Some take pleasure in observing their surroundings, of feeling fully a part of that landscape. Not far from home there is a hill which, upon reaching the crest, I am rewarded with a sweeping view of the Pacific Ocean. I love that view. I find it uplifting, even joyous. I’ve never given more than passing consideration to why I feel this way, perhaps because it is purely emotional and I don’t want or need an intellectual dimension to dilute that.
The freedom I embrace most is that of thinking, the stream of consciousness. As a youngster, I recall my mother pointing out that every one of my school reports made mention of my propensity for daydreaming in class. My grandmother would invariably respond with “That’s alright, leave the girl alone. She’s doing what comes naturally to her.”
It wasn’t until years later that I really appreciated that defense; that the word “daydreaming” along with its synonyms “woolgathering” and “wandering” (as applied to the mental state), were put-downs for that most wonderful of all activities: thinking! I was first really aware of the advantage of thinking when I reached university. There it is an asset and the more a subject required it, the more I liked that subject, particularly Philosophy. I was a scholarship kid and had a real battle on my hands in my fight to get the scholarship board to allow me to take Philosophy as a major (I agreed to do a double major in the end which I’d wanted to do anyway).
Philosophy gave me the freedom to allow my thoughts to go down all kinds of highways and bush tracks. I remember a particular argument I had with one of our lecturers (a polite but passionate, lecture room affair) and I’ve never in my life felt a keener sense of victory than when my fellow students applauded and cheered me on!
So thinking is my thing when I’m walking and the sky is the limit. That’s the freedom I cherish in walking alone; that and the sweeping view of the ocean.