Is it damaging to you to live inside all the time? Yes, it probably cramps it horribly. But then there’s Emily Dickinson, who lived in the same house for all her life, lowering her basket to the outside world. You couldn’t call her orderly poems ugly. On the contrary. But then again, she had a beautiful garden.
What do you think? Does it damage you to spend most of your life “indoors”?
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I’ve been reading your blog. I hope you don’t mind, you did put it on the internet afterall. Anyways, it is kinda awesome, keep up the good work.
I’ve been thinking about this question of living inside since you proposed it. At first, I thought it seemed silly to say anything about one’s health or intellect just because they happen to not get outdoors. However, I’ve been reading this book called The Old Ways (I am mostly writing this to tell you about this book, since I think you’d like it), and the book notes that many people from Kierkegaard to Rosseau have connected physical movement through space (mostly walking) with intellectual activity. Nietzsche said “Only those thoughts that come from walking have any value”. I recently came up with a clever (by my minimal standards) solution to a (small) intractable problem in the lab that had been frustrating me for awhile. I only came to this solution while walking in the hills and chatting with the deer one night. So, I am starting to wonder if there might not be some importance to the mind to getting outside. Perhaps this is of more importance to some than to others.
I don’t mind at all. On the contrary, I was hoping that the blog would lead to an exchange of ideas through comments like your thoughtful response. Indeed, it is a generous response to quite a silly little post, at least at face value — I give no real justification for my opinion.
I have thought about it for a few years, though, which is why I’m delighted you bring up walking in “the nature” (I’m refraining from using “outdoors” because today I was corrected facetiously by a Vietnamese barber in Florence, Massachusetts, who gave me one of the top three haircuts of my life, and made me laugh too, all without nicking me once with the straight razor).
This reminds me of a very intelligent Chicago student, even for Chicago standards, who would always walk to think. He was always pacing the Midway.
Thank you for telling me about this book.
It’s a beautiful thing that the solution to the intractable lab problem came to you where and how it did: on a wild walk in the hills. All this speculative writing (see new blog post) and it’s still mysterious to me. What do you think? How do you think your walk brought the solution to mind?