Walking has never been my thing, but since moving to the countryside the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other has become part of my daily routine. Although I was theoretically aware of the benefits of walking before I moved to rural Wales, I hadn’t truly understood how revealing it can be.
Thinking and walking go hand-in-hand; great thinkers and writers like Kant, Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens have extolled the virtues of walking. For them, walking was not a mere pastime, but central to their being—an opportunity to reclaim a silence that gave their thoughts wings.
Recently I have found myself following their example, after two conflicts with family and friends have left me battling with troubling thoughts. My solo walks through soaring valleys—and forests as grand as cathedrals—have allowed me to rearrange the furniture of my mind.
A while ago I was involved in a family WhatsApp spat that perturbed me. A relative of mine, enamoured with Tommy Robinson and Trump, unnecessarily and without provocation, insulted my liberal approach to life in a slew of vituperative texts. I reacted by explaining my position. The next day, in the same family WhatsApp group, he apologised and admitted he was riled up. I accepted his apology and later in the year we exchanged Christmas presents, as we always do. But the relationship has not been the same since. Without any funereal declaration or fanfare, we have quietly, rightly or wrongly, stepped away from each other, as if consciously making space for the huge wedge that now exists between us.
It is not so much this incident itself that has puzzled me, but a comment made by another family member straight afterwards. Having witnessed the unpleasant exchanges between us, she said: “This is silly, you can’t fallout out with family because of politics.”
It immediately made me think: “What is worth a falling out over, if not politics?”
Consider this. A very old friend of mine accused me, in jest, of flirting with her new partner at my birthday party. She may have said it in jest, but she has noticeably withdrawn from me, even though her accusation is baseless. She thought that my hand lingered too long when I greeted her boyfriend, and that this supposed transgression was reason enough for ditching a friendship that has endured more than 40 years. I am sure, had I really been flirting, that many people would have considered the fallout justified, and for a more serious reason than a political spat.
I have been mulling these questions over during my walks. There’s a real difference in going out for a walk in nature compared to the city. When I used to walk in the city I could hear snippets of the conversations of others all around me, creating some sort of cognitive dissonance. Walking in the valley, I can hear my inner dialogue more clearly, and the wide openness of the space allows me to see the bigger picture.
For me, that sense of perspective sadly doesn’t mean reconciliating with my cousin or deciding that our argument isn’t justified. Instead, it has meant realising what really matters to me: justice, equality and freedom.
Another of our relatives has no particular persuasion, politically speaking: she oscillates between ideals, committing to nothing. Perhaps, for her, the fallout might seem nonsensical. But my politics occupies a large part of my identity, as politics does for my cousin who supports Robinson and Trump. Our politics is who we are.
I think it’s a shame that politics has the ability to break up families. But I accept that it does and understand how it can happen. And I think it is for each of us to decide what we feel is worth falling out over.
