Why I Walk

If you've read any of the archives of this Blog you know that 9-11-1 had a lot to do with my more serious commitment to a walking lifestyle. But the initial seed of the idea had been planted well before then and I have to admit my reasons at the time were anything but altruistic. As a child who walked before she crawled and skipped kindergarten in a desire to get right to the good stuff, I came into the world with a highly developed sense of efficiency. For me, there was a lot about the suburban drive-everywhere lifestyle I was living that was supposedly the great American Dream that I found highly inefficient. Well into it by my early 30s with a beautiful 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom, 2-car garage and vehicles to fill it and all the gadgets and "stuff" I needed to fill the house and all the services--from landscaping to house cleaning to maintenance--I needed to maintain it, I was rapidly becoming disillusioned with the inefficiency of this model taking me anywhere close to an actual Dream of a life.

Long before I started questioning its moral roots I was questioning the practical value of a car-dependent suburban existence. You live in row upon row of houses filled with people you never even see because you go straight from your remote-controlled garages to your climate-controlled homes and your vicarious worlds of radio/television/internet in which you never have to have a single conversation with anyone outside your nuclear family or anyone who radically disagrees with you on anything--unless, of course, a telemarketer interrupts your dinner and then you're fully entitled to be as rude as you want to this unwelcome invasion into your quasi-Paradise. And if you ever want to venture out of this comfort-oriented cocoon, you have to drive 10 minutes to an ugly unpleasant strip mall to get your goods and then 10-20 minutes in the opposite direction to a bunch of ugly medical offices to get those services and then 15 minutes another direction to get your haircare needs attended to. The equally unattractive utilitarian bank and post office are about a 10-minute drive in the fourth direction. That was my life in Suburbia in a supposedly highly coveted area in which to live. And the one I observed friends in other supposedly desirable areas of the country living as well.

So there wasn't anything particularly noble about my first stirrings toward a walking lifestyle. In fact, in some ways it was sheer survival instinct. I was getting fatter and fatter--both symbolically and literally--sitting around in my lavish remote-controlled lifestyle pretending I knew something about the world I was experiencing vicariously via the media and stressing out over the energy it took to maintain my so-called American Dream and the sheer hassle of getting in and out of my car and running around in four different directions for little short trips that left me drained and exhausted and fighting traffic and parking and school zones just to get in and out of some ugly buildings for goods and services to keep up my rather nonexistent quality of life.

"The Emperor has no clothes on" was the initial reason I started planning and working toward a simplified pedestrian life. I wasn't thinking much about the good of the Whole by then at all. I was just making the common sense observation that no one I knew--including me--was actually living a very dreamy life in his or her pursuit of the American Dream. We were fat and tired and lonely and demotivated and stressed out trying to maintain our lavish little individual remote-controlled cocoons. And we seemed very asleep about the whole thing. I used to zip in and out of my two-car garage in my top-ranked little car and think to myself that future generations might well consider this period in our history as something sci-fi like and foreign. How did we go from tribes and communities that integrated all areas of their lives from where and how they lived to access to goods and services to relations with each other and communities of faith and work and play and enjoyment of the beauty of nature to compartmentalizing all of those areas off into unattractive little cookie-cutter like boxes and calling it an American Dream while becoming increasingly dependent on fuel from other sources to maintain this kind of an almost nature-less existence?

That's what started me out walking. Because I wanted a better life for myself. Not because I cared about global wars over oil and what rising gas prices were doing to the global economy and the quality of life of the masses. But because I was tired and sick and fat and bored and lonely and frustrated and certain there had to be more to life than working 60+ hours a week and zipping around in short stress-filled trips in my car to get anywhere just to make my life work and to keep myself in that condition.

My first attempt at making the city of Santa Monica my home--after careful study of what kind of place would allow for a more efficient lifestyle and let me get rid of the hassles of a car altogether--sold me on the personal benefits of a walking lifestyle alone. I dropped from a size 14 to a size 4 in my first 9 months of walking everywhere and my physical health approaching my 40s became clearly better than it had been in my 20s. I also started to notice a clearing of my thoughts and my emotions in the ocean air and a more even-paced lifestyle with the way walking slowed me down and road rage over traffic and parking issues disappeared. Others began commenting on the more pleasant and enjoyable person I was becoming and the way I started relaxing and actually enjoying my life--even in the midst of a difficult personal transition.

That was the beginning of my walking revolution--but only the beginning. The more I walked the more I realized all the other reasons for why I was walking. And now if I'm asked why I walk there's hardly an area of life or social justice issue I care about that my walking isn't directly connected to. The Arts? Walking is when my most creative ideas come to me. Urban revitalization? My refusal to let fear of crime scare me off the city streets is one way I'm making a difference in reversing the trend of "white flight" to the suburbs that helped destroy our cities in the first place. Theology and philosophy? My best times alone with God are spent walking by the ocean and some of my best observations about life and humanity are gleaned from what I observe on my walks. My interests and passions have come alive in my walking lifestyle.

And so has my ability to care about and contribute to the Whole. I walk because of what it does for the global economy, for the environment, for the political scene. I walk because if more people who could make that choice did we could literally revolutionize some of those three areas. I walk for the physical health decline in this country that desparately needs to be reversed. I walk because of how it clears my head and reduces stress and regulates my metabolism—as well as for my mental and emotional and spiritual health and the way those are all intertwined. I walk because in the city in which I have chosen to begin this revolution walking forces me outside my comfort zone as a natural loner and theorist into the world of others and community and the greater whole. In my cocooned 90% North American Caucasian suburban neighborhood lifestyle I could adopt and adhere to some pretty narrow views. Those have a way of shedding somewhat naturally when you walk past people from an average of 50-60 different countries in the course of a day. You start seeing things from a variety of perspectives before you even realize that you are.

As my About Me portion of this Blog states, perhaps the main benefit of a walking lifestyle in Santa Monica that I would hate to ever give up is that it gives me the opportunity to at least begin to See Things Whole. That's the core of why I walk.