I think of writing a lot like walking. It’s rarely the most popular, the most effective, or the most efficient way of getting to your destination. I don’t always want to do it, and it’s not always technically enjoyable; sometimes it’s boring or slow, sometimes it’s tiring and pointless, sometimes it’s cold or wet or windy and I’m retracing the same steps around my neighborhood that I’ve walked a thousand times and it sucks and I’m miserable and wish I’d stayed inside. Nonetheless, I always feel worse in my body and mind when I avoid it for too long, and it’s a loss that feels greater than just the quantifiable enumeration of calories I didn’t burn or sunlight I didn’t see. Of course, walking offers the chance of unmatched material reward: only through walking might you stumble upon a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that isn’t on Google Maps, a rich lady doing a yard sale on her stoop, a garden, a special tree, a cat, a $10 bill on the ground. But you also might get spat on by a pervert. When you choose to walk, you choose not to pursue immediate gratification or even comfort but simply to expand the number of things that might happen to you. Walking invests in the potentiality of your experience with almost no promise of tangible reward at all, which is something like being alive.
rayne fisher-quann • Choosing to walk
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