Walking
Recently, I've been working on my first editorial for Environmental Values. I'm associate editor in that journal. It felt somewhat vulnerable to send the editorial to our editor-in-chief. He is a kind and empathetic human being, but I was not sure if my editorial was at all what he expected. I didn't write about the contents of the articles (though I hinted at them), but rather about my experiences of being with those articles, what I felt. I wrote about emotions. Hope, anxiety, sorrow. I wrote about the state of academia as I (and many fellow humans) experience it. I wrote about being inspired by non-academic spaces such as children's artworks, the place where I am. Finally sending the editorial to the editor-in-chief felt good, so I decided to give a gift to myself.
The gift was a very long walk around Copenhagen. While I advocate free public transportation in my work, I personally avoid it as much as possible. I prefer walking. It allows me to engage more deeply with the place, see more, feel more, and appreciate distances. For example, when I walk to Amager to be with the sea, this is the only thing I can do in one day as it's so far away (I live in Frederiksberg). I could use the metro, but I don't. It's ok to do only one thing.
I tried to avoid as much as possible various landmarks, shops, and busy streets. I never thought that cities are places for spiritual experiences. To me, cities feel busy, overstimulating, dependent on so many other spaces (such as the countryside and far-away countries where production often takes place). Nature is where I seek spiritual, self-transcendent experiences. Some months ago a fellow human challenged this viewpoint. He said that it should not be a binary and a hierarchy (nature=spiritual, good; city=not spiritual, bad). It had me think about fellow humans who experience self-transcendence in cities. I don't, but I feel that I'm becoming more curious about the city (Copenhagen) than alienated. There are many beautiful moments. Here in Copenhagen fellow humans seem to smile a lot. I saw birds picking up discarded tissue to use in their nests. Fellow humans breastfeeding their babies in the streets. Fellow humans enjoying each other's company, holding hands. I picked some spruce tips in the local park and ate them right there. In a garden, I stopped to smell magnolia flowers. They have such a wonderful, floral, creamy and feminine fragrance. Bird cherries are blooming now too. It's intoxicating to walk past them.