“It is a great art to saunter,” said Henry David Thoreau,
according to the magnet on my refrigerator.
I’ve often envied Thoreau’s schedule of tromping through the
woods in the mornings and then writing in the afternoons. Somewhere in there he hoed a lot of beans and
made pencils. Whatever he did, he
focused on what he called “living deliberately.”
In yoga, we call this intention. At the beginning of class, yoga teachers will
often offer an opportunity for students to have an intention for the
class. This intention is supposed to
arise organically. I have to admit that
rarely happens for me. Usually, the teacher
provides an intention if you can’t think of one, but that feels like cheating to
me. So I struggle for a worthwhile
intention, and then I just have to attend to what is actually happening, and
that creates its own sense of purpose.
For Thoreau, sauntering was not just physical. It was also about taking time to read, write,
and simply be present in the world instead of rushing around as he saw his
fellow Concordians doing. He was able to
live outside of that and observe. The
events, upheavals, and experiences he witnessed back in the early 19th
century certainly resonate with us in the present day, which is probably why
his work still strikes a chord.
Most of the time, I am physically unable to saunter. I walk fast, with purpose. I remember going into a store one time to
pick up some birthday cards on my way to work.
As I strode up the aisle, the proprietor looked up at the sound of my
footsteps and said, “Somebody’s a Type A personality.” Now, I know Type A personalities and I’m not
one of them. But apparently I walk like
one. That gave me pause (very briefly of
course). Does this reflect how I want to
be in the world? And then I was off
again.
I am also mentally unable to saunter. My mind usually works quickly and
impulsively, such that if I can’t figure a thing out within a short time, I
drop it. This is why I am unable to use
any technology to its fullest extent, because it takes time to learn. Back
when I taught high school, we didn’t have bells to change classes, so I was
always the one yelling that break time was over and it was time to get back to
class. Since coming to teach at Rhode
Island College, I have filled every available space with work. As a result, I have felt, by turns, oppressed,
overworked, trapped. There is no time
for sauntering during the school year, it seems.
A couple of years ago, my friend and colleague Jenn Cook
invited me to participate in the National Day of Writing, sponsored by the National
Writing Project and the RI Writing Project.
We and some of our students enjoyed a couple of hours sauntering to
different areas on campus and writing in our notebooks, sometimes sharing,
sometimes not. Afterward, breathless and
laughing at how much fun we had, Jenn asked, “Why can’t every day on this
campus feel like that?”
Why not, indeed? Last
Friday, we had another writing marathon to celebrate Jenn’s memory by doing
what she loved to do best—writing with a community of like-minded folks. As I sat down on “the waves of learning,” a
series of gentle undulations in the grass where we had had that conversation, I
realized that I could choose to have this kind of experience every day. I chose this profession precisely because it
offered me freedom and agency—and with that, the opportunity to saunter. So why did I put myself in a box?
Lack of intention, I think.
Just as with hard work, creating time and space for sauntering also
requires intention and discipline.
Thoreau, who studied the “Hindoos,” or yogis, somehow understood that
the sauntering and the work are both necessary for a rich and full life.
It’s not as if things happen for a reason, but we can make
sense of them the way we need to, to keep going. That’s why we are capable of reflection.
We don’t have to accept things at face value.
We can make meaning from them.
We can be intentional about what we do as a result.
