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I'm not saying it'll solve all your problems, just most of them. Marcus Aurelius didn't have an easy go of it. Being the emperor would have been extraordinarily difficult. So where does he find relief? It's clear from meditations that Marcus Aurelius, in addition to his interior explorations, was a walker. He walked around Rome. He walked around Greece. He walked around the countryside.
Now, of course, people have been doing this for thousands of years for very good reason. Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Aristotle, Kant, Wordsworth, Dorothy Day, Socrates—all these philosophers, all these thinkers, walking was a part of their practice. And I can say confidently that if I didn't take long walks every day, I would see the world very differently. And so that's what we're going to talk about in today's video. Not just my walking practice, but some insights and lessons that come from some of the great walkers and thinkers of history.
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There's a great Latin expression. Basically, it means "it is solved by walking." Things rough at home? Go for a walk. Your kids having a tough time? Take them for a walk. Struggling with a big decision? Go for a walk. Feeling antsy or anxious? Go for a walk. As a parent, walks are magic. In relationships, walks are magic. If you're a creative, walks are magic. Whatever you're dealing with, whatever you're going through, walks are magic. Seneca said, "The mind must be given over to long wandering walks, or it'll break the way that that hammer eventually breaks against the anvil." We go for walks, we get outside, we get moving, and we're amazed at the problems it solves.
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The Buddhists, they talked of walking meditations. That meditation wasn't just a thing you did while you were sitting, but walking through a beautiful forest, walking along the ocean, walking in a parking lot—it doesn't really matter, but you got to get moving. I'm not saying going for a walk will solve all your problems. I'm saying there are very few problems in life that are not improved by taking a walk. Kierkegaard wrote a letter to his depressed sister-in-law. He says, "Above all, do not lose your desire to walk." He said, "Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and I walk away from illness." He says, "I have walked myself into my best thoughts." He says, "I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it." There were schools of philosophy that all they did was take walks. The philosophical teacher would walk, the students would walk alongside, and they would talk. The point is, the Stoics got outside, they got active, they got moving. Take a walk. It matters. It is a foundational habit that will make you better.
It can be a little gross. It can be a hassle. You can get some weird looks. There are easier, better, more fun things to do. But one of the things I like to do when I'm walking is I pick up trash. It's already what I picked up on my walk today. I don't do it because I have to. I don't do it because I feel guilty. I do it because in a world that's kind of discouraging and frustrating, it's a very tangible thing that makes a small difference. Not a big difference, but a small difference. But if we all did it, the world would be better.
I used to walk on the dirt road where we live. And I'd get really frustrated. You know, why were my neighbors dumping this trash? Why were people such—why were people so gross? What's wrong with humanity? And then one day it occurred to me, you know, I don't like this. I'm complaining about it. I'm sad about it, but I'm not doing anything about it. Here's something. Popsicle wrapper. And if I'm not doing anything about it and I'm just walking by, at some level, I'm complicit in it being there. I thought of a quote from Marcus Aurelius where he says, "Remember, here's something else. He says, remember, you can commit an injustice by doing nothing also." So, by not doing anything about it, I was also committing an injustice. I was also making the world a worse place. So that's where I picked up the practice. I just started picking up trash, and I've picked up dumpsters' worth of trash now all over the world. Does this make me a hero? No. Does it even offset my personal carbon footprint and probably litter I've let fly out of the back of my truck or something? No, it doesn't. But it is a positive difference. And in a world that's so frustrating and disappointing and disillusioning, it's good to have stuff like that.
There's a story about a boy who comes to the beach, actually, and he sees all these starfish washed up on the shore. He starts to throw them back in the ocean, and someone tries to tell him, "Hey, it doesn't matter. You know, it doesn't make a difference." He says, "What makes a difference to this starfish?" He throws it back again. Humanity is destroying the environment at an overwhelming pace. Picking up a couple of water bottles, you find it doesn't make a big difference in the big scheme of things, but it doesn't make it worse. And look, it makes you better. That's really the point, right? Because you become the person that makes things better and not worse, because you're the person who, when you see something, you do something about it. And so that's why this practice is such an important part of my walking practice. It really should be one of yours, too.
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One of my rules when I travel is that if I can walk, I walk. Anytime you get an excuse to be outside, you should take it. Who has the time to go for a long, meandering walk in the middle of the day? Not all of us. So, whenever I have a chance to walk, I walk. I park further away. Even if there's a closer spot, I walk. When I take my phone calls, I walk. Sometimes when I'm talking, I'll be like, "Oh, the venue is a mile away from the hotel." And they'll send a car. I say, "No, I want to walk." I always walk when I take the opportunity. It's a great excuse. It's good for the body. It's good for the mind, of course. And it gets you outside. And then I do my thinking about the talk while I'm walking.
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What's the relationship between productivity and walks? Because I feel like people who are truly productive, not people who sit at their desk and pound at things all day, but I feel like people who have big scientific breakthroughs, artists, people who have theories about the world, whatever, there seems to be an undeniable relationship with walks. Yeah. Well, it—they come up all the time, and there's a good neurological reason for it. Um, but first, like, where walks become important is once you realize what's important is, like we were talking about before, actually having the valuable idea, like figuring out something good. It's not just writing, which we can use with like scarecrows, is like just doing stuff, right? You actually have to think, right? Um, walks are really common historically for big thinkers. We think like this. We don't—it's not exactly nailed down, but we think what's going on is that the motor neurons involved in walking actually act as a bit of a dampener on certain circuits in your brain. Right? So, part of your brain now gets into these autonomous motion loops, which acts as a dampener on essentially neural noise. So, more distracting thoughts, or aides, you're thinking about this or that. So, when you're sitting still, sometimes the problem is, um, there's not enough dampening going on in your brain, and so it's hard to sustain your focus. When you're walking, it puts on some cognitive blinders. You have an easier time holding your focus on an interior, abstract idea. So, it's, you know, it's jerry-rigging your brain to be better at this thing that's pretty artificial for humans to do, which is to hold abstract ideas in our mind's eye. And, you know, this is not what we evolved to do. We're having—we're certainly not evolved to just sit down for long periods of time either, but we are evolved to cover long distances and look for things and explore places and take in information while we're walking and process, right? Yeah. So, all we're doing different now in the modern world is we're just turning the eye inward. So, instead of taking in information across the savannah and kind of processing all this information, instead, we're walking on the riverwalk and boss drop. Um, we can just turn that eye inward and put it on internal things. But yes, the same idea. So, walking, yeah, super common, and that's why I mean, I do all of my best thinking, all of my best thinking walking. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. Nietzsche said, "Only ideas had while walking have any worth." Nietzsche walked a lot. Yeah. Uh, Kierkegaard would walk just all, like, hours a day. I mean, Aristotle's school is named after his movements, his walking, right? And so, yeah, there is—it's almost inseparable, scientific discovery, philosophical discourse, and walking. Even though the irony is, when we think of the philosophers, we think of them standing in the Lyceum or in the school, or we see them stationary, but in fact, they were always in motion. Yeah. You, yeah. You read, yeah. You read the, uh, the dialogue, various dialogues, right? The Italian dialogues, and yeah, they're walking. It's Socrates with Philebus, and they're walking by the river as they're talking, right? That's the way it unfolds.
You know who the champion walker in the arts right now is? David Sedaris. Oh, doesn't he walk around and pick up trash? He does. He will. But these walks he does are epic. Like crazy walks. Like when he's in Manhattan, he'll like walk from the Battery, like all the way up to like the Upper West. Like, he'll just walk the whole island or whatever. He'll walk 10, 15 miles. No, he—he got an award from the queen because he would just take these walks and then he started picking up trash while he was on the walks, which I also do. Uh, like, I live on this dirt road, and so I'll sort of walk it over and over again, and it's like, there's another nail, you know, or whatever. Sometimes it's—it's even worse than that. But, but yeah, there's something about you're doing this thing. So there's not really any expectations that you should be working or that you should have the breakthrough. And perhaps that's where it comes from. To like Archimedes in the bath or whatever. It's when you're—when you've turned—it's still operating in the background because you can't turn it off. The thing that's working on the problem, but when you stop being so willful about it, something unlocks, and it's very powerful, and it comes to you. Yeah. Yes.
Do you also get—I get this in my town. People think you're eccentric. Like, you probably get it worse here, you know? Like, I live in a little town outside of DC, but I walk these same loops through my neighborhood, and they're like, "Oh, there goes—" I mean, they know it now because we're a small enough town. Uh, but people like, "Why do you walk so much?" I was like, "This is what I do for a living." I do this one thing every single day. And you can see I'm a little sweaty right now. I just went on a long walk with my kids. This is the property. There. We just went on this long walk around our property. We talked. We threw sticks. We told stories. We were just outside.
There's this great expression from Nietzsche. He says, "Only ideas had when walking have any worth." And I think that's right. Even Seneca talks about how the mind must be given over to wandering walks. He says, "Fields that are not allowed to rest will not bear plants." And so this is really important for me. Walking is physical activity. It is exercise. But it's really about letting my mind rest. I leave my phone at home. I leave my thoughts at home. I leave my work at home. And I just go outside and I walk. And I don't even consider it exercise. It's exercise for my mind. It's time I spend with my family. It's time I spend on my property. It's time I spend outdoors. It's time I spend practicing gratitude and appreciation. This is a thing I do every day without fail. Whether it's in a parking lot or on a beautiful beach somewhere, I go outside and take a walk, and so should you.
I'm not saying that every single problem in your life can be solved by going for a walk. I'm just saying there's almost no problem in your life that can be made worse by going for a walk, and you may well solve your problem, even if just because going for the walk calms you down or distracts you. But look, I would just say whatever you're dealing with, whatever you're upset about, whatever you're worried about, whatever is vexing your mind or racing through your head, go for a walk. Put the body in motion. Let the mind relax for a minute. You'll be amazed at what might happen. And look, the very worst thing that can happen is that you got outside. You saw the sunrise or the sunset, you saw the clouds, you saw the stars. It doesn't matter. You got outside. You got active. You're better for that. And I think it will probably make a difference, whatever you're dealing with.
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