BY: GILBERT PILAYRE
Walking
This friend of yours had been avid to walking since I can remember. Elementary school was just a few meters away from where we lived at that time. Every now and then, I tried to discover alternative routes going back home. My parents didn’t know that I’ve already been around the neighborhood. I know which way to go in case I encounter this juncture again in the future. Later in life, I joined a fact-finding mission about a murdered student leader somewhere in the hinterlands of my home province. It was such a risk since we just went into the area without informing any person of authority like our College Dean or familiar faculty member about our plan. After more than an hour of rough road riding just holding any stable bar at the back of the passenger jeepney, we planned to jump off from it, so it won’t have to stop and negotiate with the terrain again. We already paid our fairs, and we were yet in our early twenties. No problem. The lactic build-up in our body dissipated immediately after we started to walk towards the village where the incident happened. Night catches fast on us, and we still don’t know where to spend the night. One offered to bring us to a nearby rebel camp. The risk was beginning to escalate again. In consultation with the rest of the group, we decided to spend the night in the house of the village chief. The night before, there were soldiers who accordingly entered the village and randomly strafed the houses. This village was known to be Masa (or sympathetic to the insurgent’s cause). What did they expect of poor farmers whose only source of life was tilling the dirt. The rebels promised a better future if they won the war. The government: nothing but the continuation of their wretched existence. We spoke to a few people. None of them witnessed what happened. All they heard was a series of gunfire nearby. The following day, they were told to pick up the mangled body whom nobody knew. One of our friends brought his self-made flute with him crafted out of bamboo. That’s when we realized they meet some rebels ordinarily. Our friend slung his bamboo flute over his shoulder that one of the elderlies asked him to be extra careful with it. It might explode,” the person said. Then our friend started to play with it to assuage the household. We all smiled. Nothing happened that night. The murder was just a couple of hours before. Perhaps that was the respite after the violent event that happened. No soldiers, no strafing. We gobbled our breakfast the following morning. They have nothing much, but they fed us like we were visiting relatives. We planned to catch a bus back to the city. We profusely thanked the village chief and his family and went our way. We were back walking under coconut trees and meadows of cogon grasses but in a different direction. It was our way of avoiding those who might be following our tracks.
When I did my first Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain, I learned to walk without hassle simply by just looking down at the ground. I just take some time to look towards our direction. That way I learned to appreciate the small victories. Simplicity is all that matters. The grand plan can wait. In Zen Buddhism, this practice aligns with what Shunryu Suzuki called “beginner’s mind” (shoshin). Looking down keeps you present with each step rather than lost in mental projections about where you’re going. The ground becomes your teacher. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote extensively about walking meditation, where each step is taken with full awareness, kissing the earth with your feet. The downward gaze prevents the mind from racing ahead and keeps you in the eternal now. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote about contemplation as “a vivid awareness of infinite Being at the roots of our own limited being.” Looking at the ground while walking cultivates exactly this awareness — you see the finite (stones, dirt, grass) while sensing the infinite (the earth extending beyond sight, the generations who’ve walked before, the mystery of your own brief passage through time).
I also learned to breath slowly like taking in air through the nostrils and blowing it out through the mouth pouting or whistling. Somehow it facilitates some meditative moments. Breathing is the main action of being alive.
This practice somehow helped me in fighting the battles life throws at me every now and then.
Nietzsche, the philosopher, suffered from chronic health issues, including debilitating migraines, and found that long, solitary walks in woods and mountains were his most effective remedy. For him, the physical exertion of walking, climbing, and being outdoors was necessary to condition the body and mind to produce profound ideas. He said: “Do not believe any idea that was not born in the open air and of free movement—in which the muscles do not also revel.”
Walking creates a natural, sustained rhythm that frees the subconscious mind from distraction. This uninterrupted, repetitive movement, especially when undertaken in solitude on lonely mountains or by the sea, allowed his thoughts to wander, mature, and eventually coalesce into major philosophical concepts. Many of his key works, including sections of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, were composed entirely in his head while walking for six to eight hours a day.
For Nietzsche, walking was an act of affirmation. It was a way to think “through the senses” and connect with the raw, vital energy of existence. The vigor and energy derived from movement were mirrored in the boldness and affirmation of the philosophical ideas he developed, reinforcing the notion of the “free spirit” who is always “on the road.”
And so, I walk still. The trails have changed, and so have I, yet the rhythm remains the same — footstep after footstep, a quiet insistence of moving forward even when the terrain is uncertain. Sometimes, I retrace the roads of my youth, imagining the faces of friends long gone, the laughter and whispered fears we carried through darkened villages, through mornings scented by cogon grass and coconut trees. Sometimes I walk alone, letting the wind carry the memory of a flute’s fragile song across meadows, the echo of moments when danger and tenderness met.
Each walk carries a shadow of what has been — the violence we witnessed, the uncertainty we endured, the small victories that went unnoticed by the world but meant everything to us. And yet, there is a strange sweetness in it all, a recognition that life’s weight is best borne one step at a time. The body tires, the muscles burn, the lungs plead for rest — and still, the mind finds clarity, and even joy, in the simple, unadorned act of walking.
I walk because walking is like itself—a steady, unglamorous movement through time and space, through fear and hope, through solitude and companionship. With every step, I feel the pulse of those who walked before me, and those who will walk long after I’m gone. The road never truly ends; it simply winds onward, threading through memory and thought, carrying the bittersweet truth that life is as fragile as it is beautiful—fleeting, yet somehow persistent.
So I walk. Always, I walk.
