We need to learn how to walk. At least I do. The world moves faster than the speed of life as should be lived. Time and again, I need to remind myself to walk slower and see more, to take in the fleeting moments around me and find beauty wherever I may be.
Wandering without Purpose
Different cultures have coined words to describe the art of walking without purpose. The French poet and essayist Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) gave us the word flâneur to refer to someone who walks not to arrive somewhere but to see everything. A flaneur isn’t a hurrier; he is a witness, an observer, someone who lets the streets reveal themselves.
The English language has a very similar phrase that connotes the idea of walking without purpose. That phrase- “street haunting” came from the novelist, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) in an essay of the same title, published in 1927. It captures the mood of the writer one winter day in London when she felt like stepping out to buy a pencil. She never really needed the pencil. She needed to walk the streets, see the lit windows, the bookshops, the strangers. That walk became the subject of her essay, one of the most beloved essays in the English language.
The Italian has a version of street haunting which they call passeggiata. Derived from the Italian verb passeggiare (to walk), it refers to a slow, leisurely stroll through a town’s central piazzas or main streets, usually between 5:00 PM and 8:00 PM. In a passeggiata, friends encounter each other spontaneously, neighbors stop to swap gossip, and families bond while walking together. It is daily ritual that captures the simple pleasures of walking with no big purpose other than to see and be seen.
The Japanese language, too, is rich with words of a similar nature. I will just introduce one – Yūgen. The word captures the profound sense of the universe’s quiet beauty: a petal falling, dogs playing, two strangers meeting across a street. It suggests the subtle, hidden depths of things that feel almost like a spiritual connection to the universe when we allow ourselves to wander.
“The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand” says Annie Dillard in her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a classic of nature writing. When we wander, be it in the midst of nature or on the streets, we begin to see the mundane in a new light and sometimes, what is banal appears beautiful, and what is overlooked becomes worthy of attention. The Impressionists knew this. So did Woolf. So did Baudelaire and Dillard.
Related: Dolce far niente (“the sweetness of doing nothing”)