Thursday, July 3, 2025

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Since we moved to Ashby Ponds, meditation and walking have turned out to be par excellence nonverbal activities for me. But for you and many others, equally good nonverbal activities are gardening, any visual arts, playing a musical instrument, traveling, dancing, cooking and so on. Wordless hobbies give our mind time to daydream and contemplate about ourselves. 

Before moving to Ashby Ponds, I used to cook three to four times a week throughout the year—Indian, Italian, Chinese and American dishes. Outdoor, during early spring I tended to our garden—cleared the soil of fall debris around the perennials: tiger lilies, rose bushes, gerbera daisies then planted annuals: impatience, zinnias, naustrasiums etc. Our garden bloomed and blossomed in variegated flowers and lush leaves in changing seasons. Now my nonverbal activities are limited to meditation, working out on machines and walking.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) firmly believed that men and women should regard themselves as part and parcel of nature rather than a member of society. In nature one has absolute freedom and wildness. To his consternation he wrote, “only one or two persons in the course of my life understood the art of walking” or who had “a genius for sauntering.” Legs were not made to sit upon, he declared, but to stand or walk upon. 

People walk in the highways and across parking lots, “I walk out into nature much the way the old prophets and poets, Manu, Moses, Homer and Chaucer walked in.” True sauntering takes place in the woods and meadows” and not in parking lots and on highways.

“The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.” But if your body is walking but your mind is elsewhere he asks, “What business do you have in the woods if you are thinking something out of the woods.” Focus on your breath or on your moving feet, keep your hearing tuned in to your surroundings – flowing water or the cackling of wild geese. Thoreau walked for four or more hours a day.

Through the centuries, many creative masters and geniuses have used walking to stimulate and cultivate their creative minds.

William Wordsworth was spotted most days out of doors walking and contemplating.

Beethoven made a ritual of walking. During the workday, he took a short walking break in the morning to clear his mind, and a longer walk in the afternoon. He carried paper and a pen with him to jot down notes when inspiration struck.

Both Aristotle and Socrates inextricably linked thinking to walking. Both conducted their lectures outdoors. Aristotle walked the grounds of the Lyceum carrying his books while his students followed, listening and learning.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s motto was, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” This was born out of his own experience. When writing a book, he would walk alone for up to eight hours a day.

When you are by yourself, you may feel lonely. But loneliness feels different when you are in nature. Amongst trees, shrubs, fountains, streams, hills and pastures, loneliness takes on a different character. It connects you and the world around you, turning loneliness into solitude.