Walking: One Step at a Time

One of the finest treks he knows of is when the sheep are herded through Spain from north to south or vice versa, depending on the season. The trek takes two months to complete. One evening he sat shooting the breeze with a colleague about their joys in life, and the other shepherd told him: ‘When you go walking with the sheep, and you see they wal

Our need for comfort not only implies that we avoid uncomfortable experiences but it also means that we lose out on many good ones.

Peter Wessel Zapffe wrote – in his doctoral thesis with the classic name On the Tragic – on the importance of not taking short cuts, but instead using one’s time to struggle towards a goal. Receiving too much technical help

letting your body travel at the same speed as your soul.

The perfect society can look great in ads for toothpaste and cars, but I find it unbearable in reality. Everyday life often lacks a single crucial feeling: excitement. Feelings like hope, love and joy become too similar – like we’re collectively on Valium.

I wrote to the neurologist Edvard Moser, winner of a Nobel Prize for medicine, and asked whether we could evolve into more abstract beings. I questioned whether our understanding of being a part of the whole world could shift to being more about thoughts than about physical proximity. Moser answered: ‘Yes, that makes a lot of sense,’

She had never seen her child, and she lay gazing at her daughter’s smile, studying every movement and embracing her.

It’s a mistake to think too much about the goal and to ask too often about it.

We had seen a lot of stoned people during our Sunset walk, but the two at Rosie Nails were the saddest of the lot. As my friend said: ‘Most of the others are not going to go on to pick their kids up from school.’