Walking Is A Metaphor, As Well As An Act!

Satish Kumar walked over 4000 miles from India to UK and the US in the early 1960s. He still loves walking and says that thanks to walking he lacks no energy, enthusiasm or passion...

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Walking is a metaphor as well as an act. When we walk our talk, we integrate the ideal with the reality; we bring principles into practice. It was Nietzsche who said: “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”

There is an implicit connection between such thought and the school of peripatetic philosophers. Theologians have their cloisters around a monastic courtyard, and churches and cathedrals have sacred space around them for walking while studying and meditating on the mysteries of faith and the metaphysics of existence. Pilgrims go on foot on sacred journeys to reach their divine destinations. They walk around the holy peaks of the Himalayas, or to the confluence of sacred rivers, or to the places associated with prophets, poets and mystics. The act of walking in itself is as meaningful for pilgrims as the fact of arrival.

Environmental, social and political activists walk in protest against the pollution, exploitation and injustice perpetuated by those who hold the reins of power. Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March to the sea and the March on Washington during which Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech, were acts of political defiance as well as spiritual awakening. Millions of men and women have walked to bring an end to colonialism, racialism, sexism, capitalism, communism and militarism. As mothers with their babies in prams and disabled radicals in their wheelchairs have walked to show their solidarity with the poor and the oppressed, cultural creatives of all ages, nationalities and political persuasions have walked to proclaim their support for sustainability, spirituality, justice, peace, freedom, human rights and the rights of the Earth.