Walking about your city can make you 'happy, hopeful and healthy'

Walking is a favoured method of getting about the city.

Cycling is next and when time or distance precludes those options, driving is the next choice.

Tony Taylor's,
"Fishing the
River of Life".

Public transport, buses, need to be in the mix, but sadly it seems to be too infrequent and always appears to be not where I am or going where it is I want to go.

Research illustrates that for public transport to be truly effective, read useful; it needs to be effectively going “past your door” every seven minutes.

Our future will be decidedly different from what we know today and those three transport methods – walking, cycling and public transport – will become elementary.

They are, it has been said, society’s “silver bullet” as walking and cycling are both inevitably about exercise rescuing us from host of health difficulties and public transport, just like walking and cycling, will be our fundamental method of movement as the world really begins to scrabble for energy.

After 200 000 years of evolution, walking is still fundamental to our lives and our reactions have evolved in accord with that pace to ensure that a collision between walkers is a rare as snow in the Goulburn Valley.

Beyond ensuring that we can walk collision free, evolution has shaped our mental capabilities to coherently absorb what is happening around us we walk, or even at a steady cycling pace.

Driving determines that your attention be on the task at hand, or it should, and so the intricate and intimate realities of your community become a blur as you speed by; at least speed in terms of your cognitive ability to take note of what is in your field of vision, as limited as it is.

So, if you care about your community walk, explore the streets to which you have never been, look at the buildings, check out the signs, be curious, wonder why certain things are or are not happening, pick up some rubbish, encounter a stranger and talk with them, spend a few minutes talking with a friend and embed yourself in your community.

Coincidently as these thoughts were taking shape a friend lent me a book written by a 80-year-old allegedly about fishing, which it obliquely was, but in reality it was mediation about life and in which the author, Tony Taylor, thought about the five things he could pass onto his eight-year-old grandson; things that a person could do every day to make to make them healthy, hopeful and happy.

Taylor said people should develop friendships; be physically active; foster curiosity about the world; continue education throughout their life and finally, do not think about money all the time, rather offer help and services to all.

“These five things”, he wrote, “maintain good mental health”.
 

Getting it together or pulling it apart - both demand effort and intent

Pulling your life together, and keeping it that way, necessitates intent, planning and effort.

Oddly, pulling it apart, and sustaining that, requires equal intent, planning and effort.

Deciding on which side
of the line we stand.

Disequilibrium demands an exertion of certain mental or physical energy in order to achieve a purpose, just as does achieving its opposite, equilibrium.

Walking home recently as the temperature charged toward 40 degrees, three people walking the other way, with equal intent, shared the responsibility of carrying a slab a beer.

The nearest liquor outlet was nearly two kilometers away and so it was quite a journey to secure the 10kg package; a package that promised passing pleasure, but which would leave a permanent legacy of difficulties.

Those “lager luggers” obviously had a plan, had employed it with some intent and were demonstrably prepared to put in the effort to see their design through to fruition.

Any conversation questioning another’s conduct is fraught with danger as it is loaded with vagaries, opinion and seemingly insoluble differences about what is and isn’t right – maybe those struggling home with the slab of beer were doing the right thing and perhaps any judgment about their behaviour is what really warrants questioning.

Who is right and who is wrong about anything is a remarkably difficult delineation to make and probably the term “wrong” can only be applied to a few consensually agreed to and broadly understood evils.

Culture and tradition invades our lives circumscribing many things for whatever society in which we live decides for us what falls either side of the line that separates the good from bad.

Most alarming however, is the disengagement of many who appear to have abandoned the mutuality that is the energy of communities and rather than commit themselves to the greater good they appear to have capitalized the “I” in individual.

Such a development not only appeals to the corporate world, but is one that is actively encouraged for its bank balances are enhanced as people become more remote from, and less engaged with the with the forces that drive our world.

Existing processes have patently favoured an elite few, but it would be unfair not to attribute many societal advances to the present dynamic.

Rather than simply criticize and judge our fellows - that is far too simplistic and destructive - we need to engage with the vigor that shapes our communities, collaborating with those forces to guide them to an end that benefits people more so than profit.

That in itself is simplistic as any change so sweeping and intricate draws its reason from ideas as yet misunderstood by many and so to have people engage with their community they have to be able to see a benefit.

Education reveals that benefit.