Why Walk?
“All Truly Great Thoughts Are Conceived While Walking” – Friedrich Nietzsche
I felt like my life was contracting this morning. You feel that way a lot when you’re 80. I woke up in a bad mood. I don’t know why. No reason to be. Just one of those things they call a “funk.”
I went into the living room and sat in the same old chair I sit in every morning. Picked up the same old computer I use every day, and did the same old browsing pattern that I follow every day. Turned on the same old TV to the same old news channel where I watched the same old bad news about horrible people doing horrible things.
I felt like Luke and Lea when they went down that garbage chute in Star Wars and the walls started closing in on them.
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I heard that old song from Peggy Lee running through my head:
Is that all there is? Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friend,
Then let’s keep dancing.
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball,
If that’s all.
It was too early to break out the booze, so I went for a walk. My life stopped contracting and started to expand. My external environment expanded because I was out of the familiar confines of my home and into the fresh air and real images of nature instead of electronic images. My internal environment expanded into a more positive and spacious place that lifted my spirits. My mind was working better, and I felt happier.
Was that a physiological or psychological result? Probably a little of both. But, it confirms what William James said a long time ago:
“Actions seems to follow feeling, but really actions and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.” ―William James
William James (1842–1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers of the United States, and the "Father of American psychology"
With those impressive credentials, William James is telling us to act contrary to the way we feel and trust that we will feel the way were acting. That seems to fly in the face of what we hear today about being authentic.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to display my authentic self to the world all the time because there can be some pretty dark stuff in there.
All I know is that it worked for me this morning and many other times in my life when I couldn’t afford the luxury of wallowing in my self-pity and negative thoughts.
I will admit that there is some temporary pleasure in wallowing in self-pity and resentment. But, when you want to get to a better place, don’t wait for the feeling to descend on you and rescue you from your despair. Just start acting like the person you want to be.