In Praise of Walking: or, a Lesson from Elizabeth Bennet
“These hours of solitude and meditation are the only moment of the day in which I am completely myself" — Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Reveries of a Solitary Walker (1782)
This year I started a new job relatively close to my house. It's a 1.7 km walk, or if this was New York, about 20 blocks. In the first month, I ordered my uber every day to and fro but, eventually, I realised it was a financially stupid decision. Besides, the traffic is horrendous, the drivers are rarely polite and their cars are falling to pieces – overall a stressful experience which wasn’t worth my money. So I decided that I would do my daily commute by walking, just like the mediaeval peasants used to do. Since February I’ve been spending about 50 minutes of my week-days alone with my thoughts as I walk a straight avenue, and imagine my astonishment when I learned that walking is actually good for your mental health. It’s not just a that-girl TikTok scam! Then, in March, I re-read Pride & Prejudice, and this time I had one more thing in common with our witty girl Elizabeth: just like her, I am (now) very fond of walking.
Perhaps I sound like I have just invented the wheel, so I’ll give you, my dear reader, some context. My city is not a “walkable city”, on the contrary. Recife is moulded for cars, and culturally we don’t have the habit of walking due to the historic lack of public security, the heat, the improper pavements etc. Still, I was determined to defeat my dependency on cars and nothing would stop me. I was just baffled by the amount of money I was spending on ubers: almost $ 500 a month. It became a matter of principle that I should move on my own and without traffic delay, which by the way, was seriously stressing me out every morning.
Two of my twelve New Year's resolutions were: to decrease my online time and to do things slowly and mindfully, and I think walking is helping me achieve that. My job starts at 8 am; I wake up at 5:30, feed my cats, make my coffee, and read until 7; I take a 5 min shower, get dressed, pack my bag with two notebooks and leave at about 7:45. It’s a 25-minute walk to the Public Prosecutor's Office, and sometimes I leave my phone at home so that I can go about my workday without distractions (and to prevent robbery). Not to sound like a productivity maniac or a “technology-bad” kind of person, but it’s been great. I hate doing anything in a hurry, I would get nauseous in the warm backseat of those ubers while scrolling through Instagram with an undigested breakfast, and most of all, I felt like I was doing and paying attention to so many things simultaneously on my day when in reality, I wasn’t paying attention to anything, I was just wasting time on my phone and inside a car.
Indeed, this acquired habit has been incredibly valuable for my mind because it gave me a window for a silent and uninterrupted reflection that, otherwise, I would never have in my routine. Lately, my best ideas have come along these walks. The very idea of writing this text came to me during one of these trips to work. I go almost in a meditative state (as much as the fear of thieves allows), and when I arrive at work or back home I always have something to write down, and those ideas eventually turn into something more. To clarify, it’s not like I’m having daily groundbreaking metaphysical discoveries, I just think better now: about what I should write next (I have three texts in the oven), about what I read last night or that morning, and recently, I’ve been obsessed with the English history plays of Shakespeare, so I’ve been dwelling a lot on that. Walking made such an impact on me these last couple of months that now I look forward to it every morning — it became the most peaceful and creative moment of my day.
There are quite a few scientific researches on the connection between walking and brain health. In 2013 a study demonstrated that changes in the blood flow of the brain can contribute to cognitive improvement. When you walk, the blood carries oxygen and nutrients to brain cells and if that stream sputters, so can the vitality of neurons. The study was conducted with two groups of middle-aged adults, one sedentary and one mildly active, showing positive cognitive results in the latter: greater brain blood flow is associated with better scores on tests of memory and thinking than among sedentary people.
However, the folks in the early 19th century were not aware of these physical benefits, and Elizabeth's fondness for walking is due more to a psychological reason than a strictly scientific one. According to biographer Oscar Adams, “to a greater extent than was perhaps common in her day, Jane Austen was a lover of natural scenery” (242), and this preference was certainly translated to her character’s habits of walking in fields, especially if it was aesthetic walking, which prioritizes the route over the destination, a Romantic concept emphasizing not only an appreciation of beauty but a reconnection with nature and amusement of the self. Rousseau was a major contributor to this idea, with his famous Reveries of a Solitary Walker (1782), in which he documented his walks and the reflections that inspired him. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Austen relates the habit of walking with her most reasonable characters: Mr Kightley often dismisses his carriage in favour of a walk towards Hartfield, Anne Eliot very much enjoys a walk near the cliffs of Bath, and of course, Elizabeth charms Darcy with her “fondness of walking”.
In the novel, there are two particular scenes where Elizabeth walks so she can meditate on the events of the narrative, helping her understand others and herself: one after Mr Darcy’s proposal and the other after she saw him in Pemberley. Meditation, in the sense of deep focused reflection on a subject, is a concept that can be traced back to René Descartes: in his book conveniently named Meditations (1641), he suggests that one should always dedicate a portion of their day to the sole act of reflection, exercising critical thinking through the employment of methodic doubt. This is something incredibly hard for people in our day and age, and I don't blame us. Distractions are everywhere and most of the time we have to fight against our own brains to pay attention to something for 30 minutes. It requires a great deal of willpower to stop to consider an idea truly, and how can we find the time and headspace to do so, when by the time we start to consider it, something else has already come up, begging for our attention?
I speak for myself: I’m a compulsive internet-article reader, and sometimes I would spend hours reading one New Yorker piece after another or entering a rabbit hole on JSTOR, and I needed to take a step back. I realised that, with all this eagerness to know everything, I was not absorbing anything. I wasn’t properly considering an idea before I moved to another, and all that frantic reading was useless. All this “knowledge” was surface level, because it’s impossible to delve into any subject at this pace, and I think this echoes our current way of life. I had to change because it was not sustainable, and walking became a part of this larger change — it became almost a philosophical practice rather than a physical one.
In this aspect, walking can be a philosophical subject, and even a complex one. Henry David Thoreau wrote a 24-page essay called Walking (1851) in which he says “I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks”. It’s a very poetic text and worth the read. Thoreau analyses man’s relationship with nature, pondering over his personal experiences and observations as he walked in fields and forests, concluding with a societal critique as was his style. “True walking”, according to him, is not directionless wandering nor is it physical exercise. It is a crusade “to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.” Interestingly, in the end, he admits that his walks always bring him back home at the end of the day.
Well, I hope you don’t think I digressed too much — I guess that’s the price you pay for trying to explain your current inner thoughts to a stranger. The truth is, this is an unfinished development, but I already see its repercussions. This simple act of walking has resulted in significant and unexpected changes. Now I have the time and space to be alone with my thoughts without interruptions. I’m trying to consume less information and content and digest it one at a time. I learned to enjoy a slower, deeper way of thinking, and that requires patience (that one I’m still learning). I have changed opinions upon reflection and I was glad. I learned to love the act of learning itself. Now, knowledge feels the way it should — solid.
If you think about it, Elizabeth’s walking feels like an act of rebellion, and to some extent so does mine. Giving ourselves the time to be alone with our thoughts can be the last hazardous act left for us to commit — if we are what we think, who are we when we are not consuming anything? What would we think about if we had time to think? What do we care about enough to deserve meditation? What can we discover about ourselves, once allowed to reflect without interruptions?
Before we part, I’d like to recommend you some things that represent the slow pace I aspire:
The album Just Another Diamond Day by Vashti Bunyan, especially the song Window over the Bay
The film La Collectionneuse (1967) by Eric Rohmer
Mary Oliver’s collection of poetic essays Upstream
Ruby Granger’s YouTube channel
The Start of Summer by Nina MacLaughlin, an essay on the Paris Review
I hope you had a nice journey. I’ll see you in the streets.