That quiet pleasure.
📖 Praise of Walking_David Le Breton
What a brilliant and academic way to write about the meaning and value of walking! The energy rises from the title of
Rather, I am glad and grateful for the author’s thoughts as I go for a walk to get rid of my thoughts, to have some real time for myself, and because I believe in the mystery of silence. It fills my love of walking more confidently and firmly. Let’s walk - Let’s create space and rhythm to live more happily.
📝Thoughts and sentences I liked
pg.9
Walking is opening yourself to the world. By walking with their feet, legs, and body, humans regain a happy feeling about their own existence. Humans who walk on foot are immersed in an active form of meditation that opens the pores of all sense organs. When I return from that meditation, I sometimes become a different person and tend to enjoy my time subtly rather than clinging to urgent matters that dominate my immediate life.
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pg.14
In a world dominated by busy people, leisurely walking may be considered anachronistic. Walking, the enjoyment of time and place, is an escape and ridicule from modernity. Walking is a shortcut and an appropriate way to maintain distance in the crazy rhythm of our lives.
pg.16
My intention is rather to talk about walking willingly with joy in my heart. A walk that brings about meeting and conversation, a walk that savors time and allows you to stop or continue on your way as you please. What I want is an invitation to fun, not a guide on how to walk well. The quiet pleasure of being lost in thought and walking.
pg.21
Walking is an invitation to the sensuality of feeling the world. Walking means experiencing the world fully.
pg.29
As the saying goes, the only thing that matters is the first step, but that first step is not always easy. With that first step, we are for a time uprooted from the tranquility of regular life and resign ourselves to unpredictable roads, weather, encounters, and a timetable unbound by any urgent obligations.
pg.44
Walking is a way of awareness that reawakens the original meaning and value of things, and is a rewarding means of retrieving and enjoying the taste of everything in the world.
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pg.51
Thoreau’s thoughts are clear from the beginning. He writes: ‘I am sure that if I were to find a walking companion, I would be giving up a certain intimacy of communion and unity with nature. As a result, my walks will definitely become more banal. The hobby of hanging out with people means staying away from nature. If that happens, it will be goodbye to something profound and mysterious that can be gained by taking a walk.’
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pg.71
What creates silence is not the disappearance of sound, but the quality of listening, the light pulse of existence that gives life to space.
pg.76
Silence removes the useless side branches that have sprouted in the human mind and returns him to a state of freedom, broadening his range of movement. In this way, he cleans up the workplace where he is struggling.
pg.94
Numerous philosophers and writers have often spoken of the benefits they have gained from allowing free thought, reasoning, and argumentation to take place in the space created in their minds by exceptional or regular walks. Jean-Jacques Rousseau says: ‘There is something about walking that gives vitality and vitality to my thoughts. I can barely think when I stay in one place. My body must be moving for my mind to be contained within it. The sight of the field, the succession of refreshing sights, the air, the great appetite, the health I gain from walking, the freedom of the bar, the fact that I am far from everything that makes me feel tied down to something, everything that reminds me of my situation, all these cleanse my soul and give me the boldness to think bigger, to throw myself into the vastness of beings, to mix and choose and make them my own as I please, without hesitation and without fear.’
pg.97
In fact, sometimes it is better not to be too greedy. Not every single piece of this world has a name. In the world, there are still nameless empty lots with hedges, anonymous fields, and fields and valleys that no one has ever thought of naming.
pg.108
There is potential for countless meanings in each space. That is why the observation, exploration, and appreciation of a landscape or a city never completely ends.
pg.115
Bad weather is like salt in travel. Although it shakes up the quiet order. Bad weather guarantees unforgettable memories. Although it is a painful experience for now.
pg.207
If people in a hurry reduce the streets to merely a functional space for moving from place to place, at the same time, young children, on the contrary, transform the city streets into a space for exciting play located between the two constraints of school and home. ‘Children act on the street as if it were a playground where they play during recess, in other words, as if it were some space that is not linear. ‘They are not conscious of taking the shortest route from one point to another, but of getting from one culvert along the road to another manhole cover, from one sign to another.’ Young children are always unpredictable walkers.
pg.215
Japanese people sit deep inside themselves with the door closed, so they are not swayed by the surface phenomena of the everyday world. We are protected from external disturbances by taking refuge within ourselves.
pg.216
Silence creates its own dimension in the world and surrounds objects with a certain density, preventing us from forgetting the role of each individual’s perspective when looking at those objects. The time that passes there knows no hurry. The slow pace invites rest, meditation, and leisurely walks. These places of silence stand out among the cityscape and provide the most appropriate environment for self-focus. In such a space of silence, we gather our minds for a moment and recharge our inner self, and then return to the city and encounter the commotion and our daily lives again.
pg.237
Walking makes a person’s mind poor and simple and removes unnecessary clutter. Walking guides us to think about the world in its abundance of things and reminds man of the beauty as well as the misery of his condition.
pg.256
Humans are often thrown to the outskirts of the ego and then walk to regain their center of gravity. The path one goes through step by step is often a maze that causes despair and boredom, but the very inner exit is often the feeling of overcoming the ordeal to one’s advantage or the moment of reuniting with joy. The pain that is fraught with countless steps is a slow process toward reconciliation with the world.
pg.259
In fact, the most important thing is the path you have taken, but it is the end of the road. We do not travel, but travel creates and unmakes us. Travel creates us. We have reached the end of writing here, but the last word is just a step along the way. The white paper remaining is always a threshold.