In Praise of Aimlessness

One of the joys of semi-retirement is that I can make decisions on the spur of the moment. On Monday, the forecast was lovely, so I got in the car and headed for a long walk on Long Island, after a cursory check of a possible venue on Google.

I love walking in new places. This trip recalled an article I had recently read about aimless walking. Here is the link. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27186709. Seemingly, to gain the most from the experience, it is not enough just to walk. According to the article, there has to be no fixed destination or time limit, and no distraction such as listening to an ipod. It is recommended to be alone, in order to let the mind wander.

I like the theory, and the article quotes walkers from the past such as Wordsworth and Virginia Woolf. But perhaps these people did not live near Long Island. If there is no route, how can one avoid getting lost? It was hard enough to find the dilapidated entry to Arthur Kunz Country Park, let alone anywhere to park the car, and going in route-free seemed likely to end in trouble.

Still, I did my best. Before, I did not look for any sort of map or trail guide (just as well, I don’t think they exist). And, once parked – a little precariously – I just set off to discover where it might lead. I did have to make sure I could always retrace my steps. Luckily, after a while, a marked trail appeared, so that became a bit easier to ensure.

Even so, concentrating even mildly on a route home probably broke the rules of the purists, who presumably had the luxury of servants to call upon whenever they were lost and far from home. On this occasion, I broke another golden rule as well, keeping the ipod on for maybe half of the walk. While I agree that listening to nature is an important part of a good walk, walks are also a great place to enjoy music. So I tend to mix it up a bit, half with the ipod and half without. Wordsworth probably would have listened to his ipod if they had existed in his day!

Still, Monday was a relatively good effort by me, since at least the place was new, the route unclear and the time horizon open. And I did experience some of the benefits. Apart from just being thankful to be alive and so blessed by the luxury of time and the bounty of nature, my mind was free to wander.

Aimless walking has a lot in common with mindfulness. Perhaps it should be called mindlessness. Or aimfull walking? In each case, we are encouraged to retreat to the core of our bodies and minds. For a period, we try to minimize physical distraction, beyond soothing repetitive activity or simply breathing. We use that repetition to slow down our minds, to remove clutter. Hopefully that can bring us some peace, some reflection, and spawn some useful thoughts. It can work, or at least it can work for me.

This made me wonder (aimfully?) about what else we can do to achieve the same effect. Most obvious is dreaming, the ultimate aimless activity since we don’t consciously control it. I love sleeping, and I am generally blessed with benign dreams. Sometimes I wake up with new perspectives or new thoughts.

We can’t force ourselves to dream, but we can try to get enough sleep, to give dreams a chance. I read that humans sleep an hour a day less than they did 100 years ago, yet another example of our arrogance in disturbing nature. One tip I picked up lately was to by goggles that cut out the blue light we receive from TV’s and other screens, for this blue light, especially in the evenings, sends signals to our bodies to make us less tired. Another tip is to try to get used to a siesta or power nap during the day. Many of my best thoughts and most peaceful wakings come after siestas.

What else can we do aimlessly? Aimless tourism in a city, or on a drive, is a good idea. When I walk in New York, I try to consciously take different routes and to have longer time than I need. I always find something fascinating and new. This I suppose is an extension to aimless walking.

Aimless cooking might be an idea, to complement the slow food idea. Paying less heed to ingredient balances and times and more to feel might help us find more peace. But, like walking on Long Island, this one must come with a health warning, both about uncooked meat and the risks of aimlessly handling hot objects.

I sometimes look on aspects of retirement as a sort of blissful aimlessness. Large parts of the week have a lack of deadlines and an open agenda. I can take time to enjoy things like breakfast or even a shopping trip. Some days I can decide what to do on the spur of the moment.

When I first retired, or actually a little before, I had a period when one of my goals was to say yes to anything. That has similar aspects to aimlessness, in that it shows the same openness to surprise and spontaneity. I have pulled back a little from the policy now, but for a while it gave liberation, which at the time was a priority.

Reference to goals recalls a blog of a couple of months ago in praise of goals. How can one praise both goals and aimlessness, surely they are opposites? Well, yes they are, but I content that each has its place in life. A project requires goals to retain momentum and to give something to celebrate. Any activity involving others requires goals to ensure shared direction. But some time periods benefit from aimlessness – indeed aimlessness can even be a goal. Wandering as a vagrant through life with no goal probably loses its appeal after a time and most likely starts to harm the brain rather than benefit it.

Almost four years in, I still have no regrets whatsoever about taking early retirement. Almost all the surprises have been pleasant ones. There has been absolutely no boredom, or loneliness, no sense or fear of decay. I chose well, and of course I was immensely fortunate to be given the opportunity.

Yet still the most common look I receive from others when I explain my choice is one of bewilderment. I can see people thinking: wow I could never do that. What would I do all day? The sentiment makes me smile inwardly, and to an extent I respect it. We are all different.

If I try to look for the root cause of why this has worked for me, but does not work for others and is something to avoid for many others, I wonder if aimlessness is one clue. I have always cherished periods of time stretching endlessly before me, and never felt short-changed by my own company. Now I have the chance to make that feeling more common than before.

Perhaps there is one deeper level of root cause. What I find in these situations is a sort of inner peace. Even anticipating the situation offers peace. Aimlessness, as well as mindfulness, is about finding oneself. When everything else has gone, there is only oneself left. Breathing helps to focus. So does a beautiful, aimless walk in nature, with the added benefit of being able to celebrate the wonders of our world and of life.

But I suspect that it is necessary to have the inner peace first in order to welcome and then to celebrate it. A fully reconciled mind can happily remove all distractions, sure that what will remain is peace. An irreconciled mind might find some temporary respite in a breathing exercise, but will eventually seek the distractions again. If this is true, mindfulness can only be a medicine, never a cure. The cure comes from reaching full inner peace.

So if you are one of those fearing retirement, consider what it is you are running away from. Is your fear really of the emptiness, or is it of what that emptiness might reveal? And if it might be the latter, is it smart to run away from yourself forever? Or might it be time to invest in discovering what those deep blockers to inner peace might be? That will take more than mindfulness or a few aimless walks, but the rewards might be as large as anything available to humans.