Shall We Walk?
This essay was written during the Japanese Occupation, but it is as relevant today as
it was then.
I wrote an article some years ago on the benefits of walking. My automobiled friends
praised the article politely enough, they liked it (at least they said so); the points were well
taken; people should really walk more; it took someone like me to show in such graphic
terms what could have been clear to everyone before… then they went on their morning-tillnight automobile rides, increasing the size of their paunches and the number of their chins
and illnesses…
I must state, however, that I didn’t start to sell the idea that walking is the panacea of
all earthy ills, not that one should walk from here to Tarlac if there is not truck available, not
that rain or shine, in sickness or in health one should walk or else. But I did set out to claim
that if milady has to give up once in a while her tricyle or carromata ride, she will be one none
the worse for the little exercise she gives her limbs.
Walking keeps the form fit. It obviates bay windows, inelegant in men, unsightly in
women. Walking puts into play painlessly and unconsciously, important body muscles. The
leg muscles, obviously, are the ones mostly affected. But when the legs move they pull at the
abdominal muscles, giving them the needed exercise which prevents their getting flabby and
the abdomen’s becoming big and pendulous. The static muscles of the back, especially
those around the spine, are put into movement, too, and this is essential in the maintenance
of good posture. The arms also swing into motion as a natural accompaniment of walking.
There are all manners of walking. The ambling walking of the absorbed lovers, while
satisfactory from the point of views of giving opportunity for sentimental discourse, is not so
from the point of view of exercise. From the latter viewpoint, a brisk morning walk is the thing.
You need not even plan it as a formal program. It is a relatively simple thing to walk to the
office, or if that is too much because where you work is quite distant from your home, walk
part of the way. Either choice you take, however, makes it worthwhile by deriving from it the
exercise you need. Walk vigorously and enthusiastically. You can almost actually feel the
blood circulating in your body with a briskness equal to the vim and zest you put into your
walking.
Some enthusiasts have it that a good habitual walker is also a good habitual thinker.
Perhaps the situation is a bit far-fetched considered as direct cause and effect. Clean
thinking may come as a result of good blood-circulation an general body health, to which
may have contributed the exercise derived from walking improves the eyesight. Although
when the walks are done out in the country, where a person has to look far into the distance
most of the time, at hill-peaks and tree-tops or upon green grass across the brooks, the far
sight focusing affords rest and is good for the eyes.
Walk and be healthy. Walk and save money. Why be a slave of His Excellency, the
cochero, when it is only a matter of a ten or a fifteen minute walk? Walk, instead, and see the
city sights at close range. Many things of varied interest will attract you. Show-windows will
engross you if you are an addicted window-shopper. Perhaps you intend to buy a pair of
shoes next pay-day. Or a vest, or a barong tagalog for a friend or hubby, a bag for little Wifie.
Window-shopping now will help you later.
If you don’t care particularly to shop merely with your eyes, if window-shopping only
gives you pain and longings you never hope to see fulfilled, there are other things besides
windows to make a walk interesting. People, for instance. What a motley crowd of interesting
human beings a short walk can afford you. You see all types, dressly tops with their
uselessness written all over their persons, worried looking fathers of families, frowsy dames
with eyes that tell stories of hopes and frustration, eager youths and pretty girls flirting with
each other openly or subtly, but always charmingly, because they are young. You see an old
woman with her bundle of knickknacks, and you wonder how many grandchildren will shout
for joy on her arrival. There is a vicious-looking beggar whom you evade, because he appears
more as your-life-or your –money type than a bona fide pauper who needs your help. A loudmouthed woman, with the market brand stamped on her face and bearing, is haggling over
the price of a ride with an equally tough cochero. Words are exchange, voices become
excited and shrill, but you are already out of hearing distance. All your interest is now taken
up by an old couple, worn-out and thin to emaciating, but still with the light of love and
adventure in their eyes. You see the man gallantly giving his arms to his wife as they
staggeringly cross the street. You wipe the mist in your eyes, and it is good that you do so in
time or you would not see two little children, their attention centered upon some candy
displayed on a counter near the sidewalk, coming plump into your path. You step aside,
watch the eager hungriness of their look.
Maybe such city sights fatigue you as they do some people who prefer using a walk
for meditation purposes; then take to the wide open spaces. Don’t protest too soon…. You
need not leave the city nor your job; you can simply take a little time to get out of the streetcar
lines and busy-streets, and seek the fields or the less trodden path of so called civilized life.
Walk and think, allowing Nature to soothe your bruised spirit. Let the swaying grass teach
you the beautiful lesson of resilience, of bending to the inevitable, the wind of circumstance.
Let the flower teach you the essential perpetuity of life, and the bird, the joy of existence. The
tree, symbol of dignity and serenity, indifference and aloofness, is to make you see, with a
sense of balance, trivialities for what they are; the little lakes, sometimes mere puddles, full
of tadpoles and fishes and insects, to show you that life sprouts anywhere, that your own,
for all its seeming importance to you, cannot mean so very much in the big scheme of living.
Perhaps you have a problem. Some would-be advisers walk it. Walk it and see it from
different angles. Walk it and see it for the first time against the background of the whole
universe. And while walking, says an expert on the subject, “think tall, pull your chin up and
throw your chest forward no matter how heavy a burden you carry on your shoulder.”
With your sense of proportion restored by quiet deliberation and by the palpable
sympathy of Nature all around you, you strike at one solution, then another. Your judgment,
made clear by the classmates brought about by your walk and your surroundings, becomes
sound and wise. You reach a decision, and it is generally good.
Walk and know yourself. You will be surprised to find out what an enjoyable
companion you can be to yourself. Don’t be like the man who gets so bored being left alone
with his thoughts that he has to have a book with him all the time he is not with people. Books
have their place, too and an important place it is, but so have walking and getting acquainted
with yourself. Just thresh out the little doubts you have regarding this and that, mull over
remarks made by your friends or office mates, study the personalities you have come across
during the day. It’s fascinating pastime. And all this while you are taking your constitutional
walk.
Shall we walk this once then, Milady?