“The world reveals itself to those who walk.” So said Werner Herzog.
I’m flying back now from Budapest, where I had the privilege to speak to a group of European church leaders. I was lucky enough to bring my eldest daughter with me. And we had two days prior to the conference to explore one of Europe’s great cities. (It’s been special and I’m grateful for the invitation.)
In Budapest, we walked a lot.
As always, I conceived of things while moving slowly on foot that would not have pressed themselves upon me otherwise. Like: Hmm…, Hungarians are thinner. I bet it’s partly the walking.
Then this gem from L. M. Sacasas hit my inbox (here).
Sacasas writes thoughtfully on the crossroads of technology and culture on his Substack, The Convivial Society. (You should subscribe to it.) In his words,
“To walk, then, is to inhabit a fitting scale and speed. It is the scale and speed at which our bodies are able to find their fit in the world, and the world rewards us by spurring our thinking and disclosing itself to us.”
I’m pondering that wisdom as I lament the fact that my next book (or rather, books) don’t seem to be revealing themselves as readily as prior ones. Reasons are numerous. I have more jobs and “hats” than five or ten years ago. More kids. More soccer games. More emails and calendar invites. But I wonder if it isn’t also that I’m just not walking and thinking enough to have worthwhile things to say. (I suspect most preachers and teachers can relate to that.)
Sacasas wonders if the reason walking and writing pair so well is that both require a kind of deliberate slowness. Because, “Past a certain speed, we simply cannot perceive the world in depth.”
Both writing and walking . . . seem to calibrate the tempo of our minds to the rhythm of thought.
Yes, cars and jets and computers and smartphones are useful—I’m boarding a transatlantic flight in a few minutes and typing on my MacBook. But as always with technology, there is a cost to our sedentary connectivity.
Namely, “the tool we think enhances our capacity may also diminish it” (…a note to all incautious evangelists for the gospel of AI).
To this end, Sacasas then quotes Rebecca Solnit, who observes,
The mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought.
Of course, not all sidewalks are created equal—the trash-strewn footpath by the Casey’s is not the Danube promenade by the Hungarian Parliament. Nor are all motives for our ambulation equally transformative. The tourist and the pilgrim differ in subtle and important ways. As Sacasas puts it,
The tourist bends the place to the shape of the self while the pilgrim is bent to the shape of the journey.
Those differences aside, mt overarching takeaway—and one I hope to embody more this summer—is as follows:
There is a scale of activity and experience appropriate to the human animal and things tend to go well for us when we mind it.
I’d say more, of course, but it’s time to strap myself to a metal tube that moves around 500 mph. No time for irony (or editing).
But here’s to more walking when the jet-lag wears off.
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