Walking slowly
My partner and I went for a walk around Copenhagen again. We worked for some hours in the morning, but left home (where we work most of the time) at around 10 am. We decided not to have a plan for our walk, and just walk wherever we felt like it, intuitively. Walking helps you notice so much.
Walking also helps me enact my decision of finding good and even spiritual experiences in the city. After living in northern Sweden and then on an island in southern Finland, I thought that I would not be able to get used to Copenhagen. There is so little nature. When I moved to Copenhagen, I missed nature a lot. For me nature will always be the space where I find most joy, authenticity, peacefulness and self-transcendence. Many activities associated with the city are not what I enjoy doing. Shopping, visiting museums, theatres, cinema, networking events. But Copenhagen is a beautiful city, and I wanted to walk in the city to connect with it. Little by little, I began to feel happy. No one could make me engage in consumerism and visit museums and theatres. I realised that I could live slowly. There was no speed police. At times, there seems to exist an assumption that capitalism wants something, forces humans to do something. But capitalism doesn't have a mind. It's a system, but not a person who wants. It certainly has powerful logics, and structures that find themselves into the minds of humans, that constrain and empower. Yet, capitalism does not care that I choose to walk and avoid shopping. It cannot care. To think this way felt liberating and it gave me hope that I could live a good life in Copenhagen until we can move closer to nature.