The Ambling Mind
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The Ambling Mind
Taking a walk in the countryside, like listening to a favorite song or meeting friends for an evening of conversation, is thus a good example of what the philosopher Kieran Setiya calls an “atelic activity,” meaning that its value isn’t derived from its telos, or ultimate aim. You shouldn’t be aiming to get a walk “done”; nor are you likely to reac
... See moreOliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
“Walking lets you read the world – and much like the slow, contemplative mental processes involved in reading a book, the pace with which one moves through the world while walking allows for a different, deliberative kind of seeing. You notice more. You think more.”
Fwd: Celebrating 300 issues with a new community for DD readers 🎉
In Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit writes of her suspicion that “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, or thoughtfulness.” Wandering brings mind and movement into a healing congruity.
Lyanda Lynn Haupt • Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit
Hazlitt declares that solitude is better on a walk because “you cannot read the book of nature, without being perpetually put to the trouble of translating it for the benefit of others” and because “I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy.” Much of his
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