Last night I took a walk around the neighborhood I was staying at. It was something that I used to do in my younger days all of the time, but then life got busy and I no longer had the time for this. The walks allowed me to relax and reflect on the way things were going on in my life, and I always felt better afterwards, like I had stolen something back from the hectic world that I am forced to live in. It was the same feeling I got as I took my walk last night.
It also allowed me to get closer to the neighborhood. America is definitely a car culture, and we will hop in our vehicles anytime we need to get anywhere. Sometimes it is the only way we can get from one point to the next, but a lot of times, we can get to places just as easily by walking. During my time in Europe on this trip, I was forced to walk to places, and there were many people out using the same mode of transportation to get where they were going. The same thing happens with home in Seoul. But I do not see these same crowds when I walk in the United States.
There is something to be said about being out among those people though. Granted, I never talked to any of them, but I did get a greater sense of community because I was out among them. I wasn’t hiding behind the closed doors of a car, or staying huddled inside some building because I was swiftly swept from one location to another. I was forced to interact with the people on a certain level if I wished to get along. Even though I enjoyed the moment to myself last night as I took my walk, I wished there were more people out there taking a walk with me. It was the perfect night to do it too. The cool night was a great reprieve from the hot weather that Colorado has been experiencing this summer.
My favorite part of my walk was when I got to pass this old house that I have always admired. This house has sat on this huge plot of land as long as I could remember, and nobody ever seemed to live in it. It looked like an old farmhouse that was left over from a day when people worked the land out in this neighborhood. I always liked the place because I could watch it slowly deteriorate over the years, and I would think about buying the place and fixing it up someday. Because I moved away, I wasn’t able to see the house as much, and there would only be a couple days out of the year that I would get to pass it by as I sped down the road that it found itself on. But last night I was able to walk by it, and take a little more time to see it for what it was. While I moved away, somebody had bought the property and had spent the last couple of years of getting it back to its original glory. I don’t think I would have noticed this if I was in a car. It just showed me that sometimes it is important to slow down, so you can really appreciate what it is around you.
Even though cars are great inventions and allow us to get to places quicker, I like to step out of the car from time to time to take a walk. I’m glad I did it last night, and even though it was nothing special, it might have been one of my favorite moments on this trip around the world.
John Collings 