Studying Walking
When we walk, we don’t think about walking.
We don’t think about how many things have to happen for a single ordinary step to be possible. How many muscles activate, how many ligaments hold, how many bones and joints take part, how much of the nervous system coordinates something that feels completely effortless.
We don’t monitor our steps.
We don’t watch other people walk and constantly compare ourselves to them. We don’t try to optimise every movement.
Maybe that is part of why we have space to notice other things.
We can notice what is not constantly being pulled into analysis. There is room for what is simply happening.
I do this with human psychology.
While people are living their relationships, reacting, making mistakes, forgiving, and moving on, I often find myself looking underneath it all. Trying to understand what moves people. What experience created a certain pattern. What need sits behind a reaction. How something that looks simple is actually made of many invisible parts.
As if I am not walking, but studying walking.
And sometimes I wonder whether this is because understanding attracts me so much, or because I hope it will protect me.
As if there is a part of me that believes: if I understand the system well enough, maybe nothing will ever catch me off guard.
If I can see all the causes, all the patterns, all the small movements that lead to something, maybe I will be able to prevent the fall before it happens.
As if the mind is trying to study the system in such detail that it can finally stop waiting for something unexpected to happen.
But then there is a paradox.
Walking does not happen because we perfectly understand the anatomy of walking.
We do not walk because we have calculated every muscle movement. We do not walk because we monitor every command of the nervous system. We do not walk because we have proven that our legs will hold us.
We walk because we trust them.