Do you have an activity that helps your thinking? For Nietzsche, it was walking. He said, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” However, Nietzsche is far from the only one to stress the wisdom of walking.
In a chapter titled, How to Walk Like Rousseau, Weiner writes,
For Rousseau, walking was like breathing. “I can scarcely think when I remain still; my body must be in motion to make my mind active.” As he walked, he’d jot down thoughts, large and small, on playing cards that he always carried with him. Rousseau was not the first philosopher to walk but he was the first to philosophize so extensively about walking.
It is no wonder so many philosophers walked. Socrates liked nothing more than strolling in the agora. And Nietzsche regularly embarked on spirited two-hour jaunts in the Swiss Alps.
“Sit as little as possible,” stressed Nietzsche in his book Ecce Homo, “give no credence to any thought that was not born outdoors while one moved about freely — in which the muscles are not celebrating a feast, too: all prejudices come from the intestines. The sedentary life, as I have said once before — is the real sin against the holy spirit.”
Walking is a perennial habit — it is its own reward. It helps to put things in perspective and quiet the noise of life, even if only momentarily. Walking can help us to forget ourselves and find ourselves.
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