Silent Walking
Have you heard of the recent TikTok trend, silent walking? It’s a revolutionary idea, in which the participant goes for a walk with absolutely no distractions. No music, no podcast, no audio book, no walking partners. Just walking, alone, in silence. World shattering.
When I first heard about silent walking, my first reaction was to scoff. “Wow, Generation TikTok has turned something all of humanity had been doing as a normal daily survival activity for thousands of year into a ‘revolutionary trend’”
I dug a little deeper. Listen to this quote from one of the “trendsetters” when she first encountered the idea of walking without any distraction.
“At first I was like… no, my anxiety could never, which is probably what you are thinking, but something within me was like ‘Let me just try it.’
The first two minutes are mayhem. Your mind is racing, you’re gonna have anxiety. But something happens after two minutes, where your brain just gets into this flow state and everything is quiet and suddenly, you can… hear yourself. After 30 minutes of silent walking, I suddenly had the clarity, that I had been always looking for. Brain fog lifted, suddenly all these ideas are flowing into me because I’m giving them space to enter.”
After hearing the TikToker describe her first silent walk, my nose-in-the-air scoffing felt a bit harsh. I’m not old, but I had the privilege of just missing the true age of social media while I was a teen. The age of the smart phone being an extension of a ten year old’s body. The sentence, "After 30 minutes of silent walking, I suddenly had the clarity, that I had been always looking for.” haunts me. This young generation is being robbed of clarity, of peace, of stillness. All things that are the groundwork to stability and growth.
My heart breaks a little bit every time I see a group of school kids sitting around a table, checking their phones. The awkwardness of silence in a group has a way of forcing conversation, unless the silence can be filled with mindless scrolling or gaming.
We have unquestioningly given 5 and 6 and 10 and 15 year old kids devices. Devices that are designed to connect them to each other and to us, which they do. They also are devices that have created a dependency that produce sentences like “The first two minutes are mayhem.”
What is the solution? In my opinion, it is forced moderation. Are you a parent that is worried about staying in touch with your child? Give them a phone. Please, please do them a favor though and don’t let them mindlessly scroll or listen or watch. This is not tyranny. This (in my opinion) is love. My personal favorite method for this is the screen time apps that require a passcode for whatever you want to restrict. Practice what you preach and limit your own screen time with a passcode on your own phone. Also, for crying out loud, don’t let it be a passcode that the phone owner knows!
To be clear, I’m not anti-technology! My livelihood depends on it, and there are so many great benefits. Just do your family a favor, and force limitations on it. If you don’t, it will certainly force limitations on you. Whether it is the toll it takes on your ability to focus, or your ability to emotionally connect with other people on a real, deep level, it will demand a price from you. Which limitation sounds better to you?
