this is a reflection paper over the benefits of walking...invisible and quiet...on change.
Change: the process of becoming different. To make the form of something different from what it is or what it would be if left alone.
Thomas Merton has said that change can come quietly and invisible on the inside…..
When a person changes, they can change in any direction. They can change for someone else, for all the wrong reasons, and into something that doesn’t resemble who they are. To “change” in the right direction would mean to change from something that you are not, into your true nature or self…I would say. I think that ‘change’ is best expressed, for my particular understanding, as ‘beneficial personal transformation’. I think that is probably what Merton meant in the first place.
Lurking in the hustle of society, and its prospective norms, is an underlying AND voiced pressure to change and to fit in to mainstream. Mainstream encompasses so many different things, its impossible to be the perfect “societal fit.” The incessant noise from all angles…do this, be this, want this, own this, wear this….etc. etc. It is very loud and visible. Its our culture.
To go on a walk, where nothing can touch you…except for the reverberating clatter of the past, if you let it….to be still, quiet, and invisible to the judgemental eye…theres something beautiful about being away from mainstream, from judgement. It would allow a person, who is restricted by the minds false clatter, to let their guard down, to breathe, and to delight (possibly) in the small freedoms of walking in quiet solitude.
I do think that sagacity is needed to fully extract the benefits of quiet solitude, however.
