{"id":3415,"date":"2024-12-10T05:29:05","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T12:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=3415"},"modified":"2024-12-10T05:29:05","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T12:29:05","slug":"walk-to-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=3415","title":{"rendered":"Walk to Think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI can only meditate when I walk,\u201d wrote Jean-Jaques Rousseau. \u201c\u201dWhen I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.\u201d In his <em>Confessions<\/em> (completed in 1770), the famous French philosopher went on to explain in more detail. \u201cThere is something about walking which stimulates and enlivens my thoughts. When I stay in one place, I can hardly think at all. My body has to be on the move to set my mind going.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rousseau was not the first philosopher to say so. More than two millennial before, Aristotle (around 300 BCE) was part of the Peripatetic school of thinkers (the word means \u201cone who walks habitually and extensively\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve interviewed a number of novelists, poets and song writers who say the same. When they get stuck in a creative work, they go for a walk\u2014not trying, by the way, to come up with the missing text but letting their minds rest on the sights and sounds of nature. The missing text comes serendipitously.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t think the experience is unique to art and literature. I\u2019m pretty sure a computer programmer often discovers a missing piece of code while watching a couple of squirrels at play. Maybe it\u2019s God\u2019s way of telling us that work is not the only productive part of our lives. Walking to do nothing is just as important. Which is the subject of tomorrow\u2019s blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI can only meditate when I walk,\u201d wrote Jean-Jaques Rousseau. \u201c\u201dWhen I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.\u201d In his Confessions (completed in 1770), the famous French philosopher went on to explain in more detail. \u201cThere is something about walking which stimulates and enlivens my thoughts. When I stay [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3416,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions\/3416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}