Sometimes I like to be alone. It’s not lonely, though I might miss certain people… It’s just maybe a quirk of mine, or something. I don’t know. But sometimes I like walking down streets where there are buildings, houses, other places where people would normally be, but there are for whatever reason no people around.
When I first started at the building I work at now, it was fun to explore all the various places to walk. I walk about 30-40 minutes every day, and I prefer to walk outside in a large loop or some pattern because it clears my mind. Taking in all the new sights, or even relatively new sights, occupies my mind with purely visual traits. That’s important to the walk, I think. It’s a huge part of it. Taking the energy into just moving. It’s interesting.
But, as with most places, eventually I have traveled over all the places within reasonable walking distance, and done all the various patterns and straight line there-and-back routes, and so they become routine. Walking in the same patterns, by the same sights and sounds and smells, desensitizes the experience. This is especially true in colder weather, when I have to walk inside. The visual aspect isn’t as interesting. Sure, it’s beautiful, and when spring comes just the fact that I’m walking outside again will trigger completely visual processes again, and again when things start to bloom.
Until then, though, the desensitization means my brain has to occupy itself in some other way. Usually, this means I start thinking. My brain seizes upon some idea, and runs with it. Sometimes it’s a poem or a thought that is worth exploring, and I find myself pulling out my phone and jotting something down to finish later. But sometimes, it’s something that I just really didn’t want to think about. Not that it’s bad, just that it’s something that isn’t relaxing, like what I have to do at work, or later that week, or one of the other regular and stressful things from life.
The key to the entire walk, though, is destressing the mind. And though I sometimes have great ideas, I would much rather just walk without interruption, seeing things without thinking, just putting one foot in front of the other, my only care being which route to take, but otherwise having no thought deeper than cloud formations, or water ripples, or rustling leaves.
Yes, ideally this could be totally accomplished by going into one of the nature areas around where we live, the state parks or metroparks, but it’s not always practical to do. There’s something completely relaxing about walking down a street full of houses and not seeing a single person, car, bike, gardener, nothing but a snapshot of the street that I happen to be walking down.
I remember this same sensation when I used to deliver pizza at night, especially in winter. There would be complete silence on a street, coldness, maybe the moon shining down, not another person or creature, ground covered with untouched snow… and I liked that.
Maybe I just think too much, and so not thinking at all is a welcome rest from that. Or maybe I see something in the quiet stillness. Maybe I get something out of it. I don’t know. Maybe experiencing complete still, calm, quiet, pristine, dark, unpopulated areas help me to appreciate the busy, warm noisy aspects of life.
Edward Hotspur
I love those quiet moments. I’m looking forward to spring so I can enjoy my early morning coffee on my deck and just absorb the sounds of nature. It gives me time to put myself back together again.
Yes, exactly. The brain needs to rest sometime other than when you’re asleep.
I find even more than the silence, the smells relax me the most – fresh cut grass, lilacs, even the smell of rain.
The smell of freshly mown flowers, the sound of the gardener being fired… ahhhh….
Lol….you are warped, but always amusing.
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I need to be alone. It’s the only time I can clear my mind. My husband is not that way. He hates to be alone, hates to be without me. When I ‘must’ have some space, and Jen time, I hop in my car and drive 2 & 1/2 hours to my house on the lake. We have a huge lake here, east of me in KC, and my house is right on the water. It is so quiet there, and peaceful. I write a lot there. It’s busy in the summer, of course, lake party time, but the winter is something different. it’s for the peaceful soul who likes the quiet, alone time.. I like both seasons there. I need to take a road trip, now that I’m talking about it.. and take some pictures of the lake in the morning, like 5 am when the sun is coming up and steam is rising up from the water.. it’s breathtaking. Lovely post Hotspur. I’m the same way… ~Jen
That sounds great… I just have the one house, though, but there are certainly many peaceful and scenic places to visit, or sit and not think.
Yea, I run away there!! But you’re right! There are so many places to go to just ‘be’ (as the Buddhists say) I think it’s so healthy for the mind to have time alone. You get to work through your life, your thoughts, without any outside influences. Sometimes those influences are good, but it has been said that the answer’s we are looking for are right inside of us.
I don’t know about the Buddhist philosophy, but I do enjoy being centered, and I do appreciate the concept of doing nothing with no sensory input for 10 minutes every day.
When I was volunteering with the restoration crew on the Midway, I used to creep all around in the lower decks of the old aircraft carrier with just a flashlight. It was awesome. Also, whenever we travel, I get up before the sunrise and go on ‘adventure walks’ to explore any place we stay. When I travel overseas, I not only try to explore the back alleyways, but I try to get to some woods or forest and then get off the paths. I dig you, brother.
Edward, nice post! You evoked memories I have of working 12 hour shifts in the Alert & Warning Center, where I had to be at work either 6:30 a.m. or 6:30 p.m. Work was about an hour away, which meant driving in the dark during the winter or just dawn during the summer for the a.m. shifts – loved the air, the stillness of the streets, especially on a Sunday where I’d take a bet on how long before I saw another car. Good times! Also, those rare moments of break time at 3:00 a.m. when it was just me, an occasional night creature, and the sounds of traffic far off.
I like those still and quiet times.
I’m there too. I spend a large portion of my day alone but it isn’t the same. It doesn’t have that underlining sense of awe or inspiration to it. No hitch in the breath or shiver down the back or peace settling over your soul. I go out by the pool for that just as the sun is rising or yeah, walking too.
Yes, it doesn’t always happen. Only sometimes.
I have no idea of what it is like to be ‘still’, nor does my brain! Imagine that!
It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible either.