the case for a long walk
postcard 42: on year end reflections (ish), the joy of boring routines, and getting off your phone and touching some grass
“Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall.”
prelude
Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn--that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness--that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.
—Persuasion, Jane Austen
On Thursday, I got up at six in the morning, put down my phone, shoved my credit card in the pocket of my jeans, and took myself on a three hour walk. The weather has been lovely and sunny lately, sitting in the low to mid sixties. When the sun began rising, painting hues of crimson and vermillion and russet across the canvas of the sky, I rolled up the sleeves of my sweatshirt to soak some sunlight into my skin—much like a plant desperate to photosynthesize (everyone knows how important this is during the time days begin to get dark at 4pm). I ended up following the beach path in front of my house and walking alongside the narrowly winding mountainous car lanes until I abruptly found myself in the sprawling metropolitan heart of the city.
The sudden change in noise level felt jarring, and I found myself having to take a few breaths to recalibrate myself and adapt to it. Almost on autopilot, I went to my favorite coffeeshop—one I would usually go to by taking the bus—and ordered a steaming mug of black coffee. I read somewhere that you become an adult when the aftertaste of coffee stops tasting bitter; the coffee burned my throat, but it tasted strangely sweet. For the next ten or so minutes, I sat down with my drink, nervously fidgeting with my hands because I had no idea what to do without holding my phone or a book. My brain’s association with scrolling through my notifications and texts, or reading a book while having a cup of coffee, proved difficult to untangle. I inspected my Christmas-themed nails that were beginning to get a little too long to efficiently do anything, and then I mindlessly watched the two baristas make drink after drink behind the counter, my eyes following the rhythm and cadence of them moving from machine to machine. I counted seven iced Americanos, four hot black coffees, seven hot lattes, eight iced lattes, and two cappuccinos.
The boringness of it all felt oddly transformative, like it was perhaps the first time I had truly slowed down since forever ago. I felt like I could finally hear my own thoughts for the first time in half a year—why had I been so scared to do that?—and felt lighter than I had in a while. By the time my eyes slid to the time on the lock screen on the phone of the person next to me, I realized that it had been five hours since I left my house. I got up, thanked the person behind the cash register, and left the store. I wandered around the mall, leaned against the wall, and people watched for a while—something I loved to do when I was younger. I’d walk to a park, sit down on a bench, and listen to people’s conversations flitting in and out of my ears for minutes upon minutes. I used to love the sentimental feeling of belonging to a greater part of something, like the fact that everyone was somewhat interconnected in this vast cosmic universe.
Forcefully detaching myself from actively engaging with anyone or any conversation, and confronting being alone in my own thoughts, allowed me be under an enchanting illusion for a bit that time stood at a standstill—something I have desperately wanted. This past year, I have quite literally been overworking myself to a concerning degree, to the point where I was only sleeping a few hours a day in the past few months and people around me began verbalizing their worries. I’ve been living life on fast forward, constantly pressing the button until the cassette itself is at risk of breaking. There have been fifty different things on my plate that I’ve felt the burden of, like Greek-mythology-Atlas, weighing down on my shoulders, until sometimes I find myself hoping that the plate itself breaks so every responsibility I have falls into a deep abyss.
I think that in the overwhelmingness of that, I began feeling scared of my own thoughts, self medicating by trying to find distractions everywhere. I’ve recently spent hours and hours in an overthinking spiral, anxious for absolutely no reason, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Moreover, coming back home from a twenty day trip full of seeing my best friends caused me to become incredibly isolated from my reality, equating and thus conflating solitude with loneliness, and trying so hard not to be alone in my own thoughts. For someone who’s always logged only two or three hours of screen time a day, I’ve become uncharacteristically dependent on my phone in hopes of recreating the same feeling of in-person interactions with close friends, although texting and calling can never amount to that. I ended up misinterpreting and misplacing so much of my sleep deprived anxiety in the wrong places and people, to the point where someone had to outright tell me about it for me to step back and realize I had drifted too far from reality while attempting to avoid hearing my own thoughts.
At last, while on a little walk, I heard my thoughts clearly in my head for the first time. What I thought I felt wasn’t how I felt at all; I felt the overwhelming relief in that revelation, and the world finally stopped spinning. I took the steps down to a small beach not far away from my house, and I sat down on a large rock. I stared at the reflection of myself in the water, the ripples distorting my facial features. I felt grounded and realized that I had floated too far from my reality and the truth of things because dreaming is nice—and I wasn’t doing a lot of sleeping, anyway. Being a transplant in a city as an adult is always a bit hard, I think.
In the haze of productivity and trying to stay connected with the world, I seem to have forgotten the joy and magic of a simple walk.
When I was younger, this was my mom’s solution for everything. I’d tell her about a worry I had or an anxiety that wouldn’t ease, and her answer was always the same. “Sweetie,” she’d tell me, “go on a really long walk and come back, and then we can discuss.” She’d map out where I should walk for me—around the apartment block, around the town and through the local playground, across the ice cream shop and back home again. I was initially reluctant, because one of my mom’s rules was that I shouldn’t carry anything outside apart from my tiny flip phone for safety. Besides, this was the time when I refused to peel my eyes away from a book I had in my hand, even when crossing the road (so much so that my parents sat seven year old me down and very seriously told me, if you don’t stop that, we’re going to have to leash you). So walking around in my own thoughts felt strange and foreign to me.
By the third or fourth mother-mandated walk, it stopped feeling less like a punishment. Somehow, on this walk, the dissonant mess of thoughts in my head organized itself in a single file line, and I could see all of my worries in a distant, linear timeline. When I got home, I was incredibly excited; I had a new way of seeing the problem at hand. Instead of “I have no idea what to do”, it ended up being, “I think I should do this, and I want to know if you agree.” This gradually became a habit as I grew older. Whenever I have a worry that felt unsolvable, I drop everything, put on my sneakers, and drag myself out on a walk.
There is something about the act of walking that quiets down all the extraneous murmurs in your brain, and everything suddenly morphs into clear cut clarity. It’s not a miracle cure, but it sometimes is the only thing that works and allows you to see your life at a distance. You can’t see the full panoramic view of a meandering river if you are sitting closely on its banks.
Why does walking feel like the best prescription to any sort of distress? It grounds you in a physical way, I think, feeling your feet literally touching the pavement with every beat of your heart. In that moment, you become something bigger, a part of every sprawling nature landscape. Something in your life that felt so overwhelming suddenly feels small in comparison to the sheer magnitude of the world around you. And in the open solitude, the frequency of your thoughts begin to change, and something that didn’t make sense, the gray areas clouding your head, presents itself with an answer in startling technicolor.
Walking to ruminate is not a new concept at all; in fact, it is perhaps one of the oldest philosophical exercises in the world. Authors have written about this again and again throughout centuries. Almost every one of Jane Austen’s characters reaches an epiphany while taking a walk. One of my favorite depictions of a good walk is in Mrs. Dalloway, in which Clarissa, the protagonist, takes a walk through 1925 London, in preparation for a party. During the walk, the city comes alive, an immortalization of how different a metropolis can be almost exactly a century again. We delve into Clarissa’s thoughts, the past and present of her life folding dimensions into one single plane. The act of walking in itself translates to a type of modernist stream of consciousness.
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.
—Søren Kierkegaard
As a (mild…ish) control freak, there is something glorious about how walking is the only form of locomotion where I can fully be in control. I can adjust my pace and walk for hours upon hours. Automobiles, whether that’s a personal car or public transportation, is a passive form of moving. There are so many external circumstances at hand, and you will never be able to be in full control of the way in which you move. Even running, which is the same feedback loop as walking but just at a higher frequency, is not entirely within my control because intense exercise tires bodies out faster.
That being said, there is still a case to be made for running, but within the bigger context of routines. Almost every morning for the last two years, I’ve been going on a morning run for approximately four or five kilometers. I live by the beach, and there’s a picturesque little path that winds around it. It’s one of the parts of my morning routine that I cherish the most, and one of the reasons why I sorely missed being back at home when I was traveling last month. When you get into the habit of a good routine, there’s a certain addiction to the groundedness of it. That despite whatever is going on in your life, there are these series of constants you can stick to, rinse and repeat, no matter what. I especially feel this way about morning routines, because I’m a corny believer in the theory that the way you spend a morning defines your entire day.
I don’t think it’s quite in the Forbes article, ‘waking up at 5am’ self help book morning routine way. Self help books that attempt to prime its readers for hyper-efficiency and success portray morning routines as this sort of bureaucratic, obligatory sequence of events. Personally, a good morning routine should do the opposite—instead of feeling like a binding contract, it should be something to look forward to doing every morning, and something that brings peace. In the same vein, when you get thrown off your routine, you have to give yourself the grace and time to readjust. Routines are subjective and anything can become a routine, so learning what’s good and bad for you is also a learning curve.
A few months ago, I wrote an essay on why I love solitude. Solitude is one of the most versatile states of being—it can be a fortress to guard you from the outside world, but it can also be something that allows you to somewhat selfishly process your thoughts and emotions in the company of just yourself. I talked a lot about journaling, about sitting down at your desk and pouring out every thought in your brain in a soundless apocalypse. I write:
There’s a quiet stillness in the early morning hours that I love. I write pages in my journal—sometimes it’s just a rephrasing of yesterday’s thoughts, or sometimes it’s something completely new. I have a terrible habit of intellectualizing my every thought but repressing every emotion, so journaling is a balancing act for me. One day, I’ll repeat the same thing into oblivion and then it’ll click; my brain will become silent from the deluge of thoughts crowding every crevice, and I’ll feel my heart finally grasp the full array of emotions in technicolor.
But sometimes, even journaling feels overwhelming and seeing your thoughts written out on paper can feel like a lot. On the contrary, the very basis of learning how to reconnect with yourself, for me at least, is going on a walk. No overthinking, no rationalizing, no intellectualizing. Just me in the company of the world around me.
So this is the case for a good walk. Put down your phone. Pull on some clothes (and gloves, of course, so your fingers don’t freeze). Touch some grass. And just be aimless for a bit, until the aimlessness doesn’t feel aimless anymore.
(Also, going to do a little new segment where I share the playlist I’ve had on repeat throughout the week. This week, I revisited my old 2014 playlist of songs that I was obsessed with a decade ago. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, it was mostly full of Arctic Monkeys, Vampire Weekend, Radiohead, and The Smiths, as any self respecting fourteen year old girl who lived on Tumblr would. I haven’t listened to some of these songs in a good five years, so it was so nice and nostalgic revisiting it).
interlude i: what i read this week
Still slugging through War and Peace! We are on part III of volume I now, which seems like a lot, but we’re barely reached 250 pages out of a whopping 1300. I’ve been warned by friends who have read this that the war parts are incredibly boring, but like this essay, there’s something so great about that. I actually really love the battle parts because it combines so much real historical context with fictional characters, and I think the combination of that is so fun to read about as someone who loves history. It’s interesting to see how Tolstoy places real life events in the paradigm of his own fictional world. Part III of Volume I takes us back to Russian high society, and the chaos of the marriage market world feels almost similar to the 1805 battlefield.
Like I warned in my last postcard, this is probably going to be the only book I’m reading for the foreseeable future (even through holiday season, because nobody truly needs that much holiday cheer).
Here are some articles and essays I loved this week:
A Linkless Internet by Collin Jennings
In creating anonymous summaries, AI flattens out all the fascinating architecture of thought that makes the internet hum.
Living Coral, the Brutal Hue of Climate Change, and Brand New iPhones by Katy Kelleher
The ancient Greeks did not view coral as a living thing. To them, coral was as dead as stone, lifeless as a ruby or a dirty fistful of gold. Coral was bloody, coral was petrified. Coral was the beautiful remains of a violent victory.
Toni Morrison and the Ghost in the House by Hilton Als
From 2003: As an editor, author, and professor, Morrison has fostered a generation of black writers.
Okay I’m Healed! Now Send Me the Exact Same Guy by faith zapata
On recursive romances and the tragic, cyclical nature of my track record so far.
The Hanya Yanagihara Principle by Andrea Long Chu
The novelist tends to torture her gay male characters — but only so she can swoop in to save them.
The Best Books of 2024, According to Friends of the Review
The Paris Review’s best books of 2024
Not Me—I Was Just Lying for Fun by sarah cucchiara
On fabricating your life, fear of losing control, and trust.
Why Olga Tokarczuk Likes to Read T.S. Eliot in Translation by Rebecca Clake
“It’s fascinating to read poetry in its original form,” says the Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, whose latest novel in English is “The Books of Jacob,” “but it’s just as fascinating to read it in a variety of translations. Suddenly the same text takes on new dimensions, as if it were growing in new directions.”
Eat Butterflies With Me by Patricia Lockwood
Erudition is delicate to dissect—Patricia Lockwood writes about Vladimir Nabokov.
World in a Box by Shannon Mattern
Cardboard media and the geographic imagination.
interlude ii: what i watched this week
Winter is definitely movie month, and I watched three this week: I rewatched The Holdovers (a movie I love so much that I treated the day I watched it like a national holiday), which definitely has a permanent place in my winter rewatch rotation. I also watched Nightbitch, which I enjoyed as a book but I didn’t love as movie. I don’t know—I feel like it could have been better, and I sort of feel like it would have been if the movie met the right director. And since winter always reminds me of classic movies, I rewatched Miracle on 34th Street (the 1947 one), which I think is one of the best Christmas movies of all time. I can’t wait to rewatch all of my Christmas movies throughout this week (Love Actually, It’s a Wonderful Life, Elf, Home Alone, The Nightmare Before Christmas)
I promise I will update all my Letterboxd reviews before this year ends—I’ve just been insanely busy and that is going to require a few hours worth of logging. But it will happen, I’ll make sure of it.
Video essay wise, I’m still listening to the documentary on Henry VIII and his six wives, which is so good to listen to while doing chores or mindlessly cleaning around your house. I also watched this timeline of the Middle Ages, because I’ve just been really into rereading and looking into European history again (can you tell that I almost triple majored and added on history as well).
postlude
things i love: walks! (obviously you knew that), cinnamon apple tea, any type of tea, my ralph’s coffee christmas mug, tolstoy
leaving my apartment for a walk and thinking of u
going on a walk later to honor this essay