Let's take a Walk

Note, this is a mental exercise, and you should not try to actually take this walk. All of this can be accomplished while you are sitting in front of your computer. 

Let’s take a walk. Don’t worry, it won’t take long. You won’t even have to leave your chair. Just relax and follow instructions.

Release all the tension from your body. Drive it out with deep breaths and forceful exhalation. Let your mind wander and expand while you do this. when your mind feels very large, try to push it out of yourself. See if you can make it stand alone, outside of your body.

If you couldn’t do this, you won’t be able to walk with me, but maybe you should keep reading anyway. Who knows? You might learn something. But if you aren’t walking, I’m no longer talking directly to you.

Now that you’re standing outside of yourself, we can start walking. Walk your mind out of your home, and get to the street you live on. If that will take some time, it’s ok. We’ll all wait for you.

Are you at the street? Ok. Take a left, then take the next right. now just walk straight. Feel your steps growing larger with each foot fall. Let your imaginary legs stretch out until you are so massive that you are stepping over two story buildings with every stride. Then grow some more, till you are as tall as the Empire State Building. Just  keep walking. Now your steps are so large that they’ll take you anywhere. 

Walk into the countryside. See all of the fields of crops, see the farmers tending them. Now step further from the city. Step onto the Navajo Reservation. See the desolate beauty of the mesas and the buttes. Absorb the wonder of the huge open space.

Now walk to New York City. Let your ethereal steps walk you right into the skyline, and lean on the Empire State Building as you look at all of the people working their way through the Big Apple. See the pain and the joy, the beating lives of nine million human beings.

Let’s leave the U.S. now. Stroll down into Mexico. See what you can see on your way by. Walk down the Isthmus, and don’t trip on the Panama Canal as you get down to South America. Walk down one coast and up the other. Stroll through the heart of the Amazon if you like.

Cross the Pacific, and take a look at the Sydney Opera House. Walk North to China. Visit Japan. Watch out for mines as you tiptoe through the Middle East.

See Europe in an hour, walk down into Africa. See all the people of the Earth and hear all the languages of Babel. Walk up on Mt. Kilimanjaro and look down at the Serengeti. Let yourself shrink down to a natural size again, and jump from the peak. Fall back into your shell, resting at the computer screen. Open your eyes. Now be honest. How many victims did you see on your journey? How many starving children? How many homeless veterans? How many people who couldn’t pay the rent and moved back in with their parents? Did you even see any of them, or did you just go on the walk to see the sights?

The point is this. We imagine the world as we’d like to see it. We don’t want to go to Africa and see civil wars raging in the jungles. We don’t want to see absolute poverty consuming lives all over the globe. The problem is that those things are real. They exist and they are everywhere. We can’t ignore them. We need to open our eyes to the realities of our world. To the beauty and the atrocity. Are you willing to do so? Are you ready?