Soul restoration...

There are some truths that come easily to you. The tragedy is that they are also lost easily in the daily madness of life. 

One of them is that - "Walking is good for the soul." 

Did anyone ever tell you that? Do you remember it often enough? 

I often lose track of this wonderful, inexpensive, easy past-time in the midst of that thing - rightly called the 'daily grind', because, it does leave you a little less and a little broken. Working 12 and 13 hours shifts staring at the computer screen or running between instruments is not likely to be refreshing especially with deadlines right around the corner. And they do take a toll. 

Finally, even when I decided to take a day off and abandon the world for a day - I expected a lot but that didn't do much. It sure left me feeling better physically, but it did nothing to restore the mind. The world seemed to spin faster and faster with each passing day as the hours kept shrinking and the work kept increasing - or so it seemed. 

But a walk with the wind in my face was all that was needed to make the world seem a better place. Sipping on the hot coffee with the words of PGW talking of "Jeeves' oddly shaped head" were immensely helpful but nothing is more restorative to the soul than the walk. 

The walk and the gentle wind during the wind poke these tiny holes into the cocoon that surrounds you with each passing day and somehow the heaviness that builds up with the days just falls through - gradually - seeping through the holes, like the sand slips through from that hole in the pocket that you never knew existed. And the mind feels quieter, clearer, still-er and ready to think and look beyond the obvious. A walk does that to me - each and every time without fail. It is almost as if the monotony of the task, frees up the mind to look beyond. It is almost as if your moving at a slower pace, slows the world down too. Walking, to me, is restoring the soul - just one step at a time. 

And so, Irrespective of everything else he ever said, I know Nietzsche had gotten something right when he said that “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”