SHALL WE WALK

Pura Santillan-Castrence

I wrote an article some years ago on the benefits of walking. My automobiled

friends praised the article politely enough, they liked it (at least they said so); the
points were well taken; people should really walk more; it took someone like me to
show in some graphic terms what should have been clear to everyone before…then
they went on with their morning-till-night automobile rides, increasing the size of their
paunches and the number of their chins and illnesses. Today ninety percent of those
who are reading this little essay can’t go back on it immediately by calling cabs or
their chauffeur, Rodolfo, to take them to the market six blocks away.

No, indeed, today, they jolly well have to hoof it from wherever they are to
wherever that precious market is for the simple reason that taxis are as rare as a
white crow, and good old Rodolfo is no longer a chauffeur but a big butter-and-egg
man at Avenida Rizal.

The remark a person might expect to hear when he tells this interesting
situation is: “Isn’t that just too bad?” As a matter of fact, that’s not what he’ll hear. No
sympathy is wasted nowadays on the fellow who has to use his God-given means of
locomotion. And, indeed, why should it, when walking does more good than harm.
Do I hear snickers? Something about rainy walks? Something about colds and wet
feet and not getting to the office in time? All to the point, is my answer.

In defense, I must state, however, that I didn’t start to sell the idea that walking
is the panacea of all earthly ills, nor that one should walk from here to Tarlac if there
is no truck available, nor that rain or shine, in sickness or in health, one should walk
or else. But I did not set out to claim that if Milady has to give up once in a while her
tricycle or carromata ride, she will be none the worse for the exercise she gives her
limbs.

Of course, the memory of how nice taxi rides could be, hurts; hurts the feet, I
mean, but the hurt doesn’t show-and the good effects of the waking do. All right, sour
grapes, if you wish, but the good effects are there just the same ready for the
plucking. Here, listen to a few of them.

Walking keeps the form fit. It obviates bay windows, inelegant in men,
unsightly in women. Walking puts into play, painlessly and unconsciously, important
body muscles. The leg muscles, obviously, are the ones mostly affected. But when
the legs move they pull at the abdominal muscles, giving them the needed exercise
which prevents their getting flabby and the abdomen’s getting big and pendulous.
The static muscles of the back, especially those around the spine, are put into
movement too, and this is essential in the maintenance of good posture. The arms
also swing into motion as a natural accompaniment of walking.
 There are all manners of walking. The ambling walk of the absorbed lovers,
while satisfactory from the point of view of giving opportunity for sentimental
discourse, is not so from the point of view of exercise. From the latter viewpoint, a
brisk morning walk is the thing. You need not even plan it as a formal program. It is a
relatively simple thing to walk to the office, or if that is too much because where you
walk is quite distant from your home, walk part of the way. Either choice you take,
however, makes it worthwhile by deriving from it the exercise you need. Walk
vigorously and enthusiastically. You can almost actually feel the blood circulating in
your body with a briskness equal to the vim and zest you put into your walking.

Some enthusiasts have it that the good habitual walker is also a good habitual
thinker. Perhaps the situation is a big farfetched considered as direct cause and
effect, clean thinking may come as a result of good blood circulation and general
body health, to which may have contributed the exercise derived from walking. In the
same manner may be reasoned out the claim that walking improves the eyesight.
Although when the walks are done out in the country, where a person has to look far
into the distance most of the time, at hill-peaks and tree-tops or upon green grass
across the brooks, the far sight focusing affords rest and is good for the eyes.

Walk and be healthy. Walk and save money. Why be a slave to his
Excellency, the Cochero, when it is only a matter of a ten-or-a-fifteen-minute walk?
Walk, instead, and see the city sights at close range. Many things of varied interest
will attract you. Show-windows will engross you if you are an addicted window-
shopper. Perhaps you intend to buy a pair of shoes next payday. Or a vestido, or a
barong Tagalog for a friend or Hubby, a bag for little Wifie. Window-shopping now
will help you later.

If you don’t care particularly to shop merely with your eyes, if window-shopping
only gives you a pain, and longings you never hope to see fulfilled, there are other
things besides windows to make a walk interesting. People, for instance, what a
motley crowd on interesting human beings a short walk can afford you. You see all
types, dressly tops with their uselessness written all over their persons, worried-
looking far of families, frowzy dames with eyes that tell stories of hope and
frustration, eager youths and pretty girls flirting with each other openly or subtly, but
always charmingly, because they are young. You see an old woman with her
bundles of knickknacks, and you wonder how many grandchildren will shout for joy
on her arrival. There is a vicious-looking beggar whom you evade, because he
appears more as your-life-or-your-money type than as a bonafide pauper who needs
your help. A loud-mouthed woman with the market brand stamped on her face and
bearning, is haggling over the price of a ride with an equally tough cochero. Words
are exchanged, voices become excited and shrill, but you are already out of hearing
distance. Also your interest is not taken up by an old couple, worn out and thin to
emaciation, but still with the light and adventure in their eyes. You see the man
gallantly giving his arm to his wife as they staggeringly cross the street. You wipe the
mist in your eyes, and it is good that you do so in time or you would not see two little
children, their attention centered upon some candy displayed on a counter near the
sidewalk, coming plump into your path. You step aside, and watch the eager
hungriness of their look.

Maybe such city sighs fatigue you as they do some people who prefer using
their walk for meditation purposes; then take to the wide open spaces. Don’t protest
too soon. . . you need not leave the city nor your job; you can simply take a little time
to get out of streetcar lines and bus-streets, and seek the fields or the less trodden
paths of so-called civilized life. Walk and think, allowing Nature to soothe your
bruised spirit. Let the swaying grass teach you the beautiful lesson of resilience, of
bending to the inevitable, the wind of circumstance. Let the flower teach you the
essential perpetuity of life, and the bird, the joy of existence. The tree, symbol of
dignity and serenity, indifference and aloofness, is to make you see, with a sense of
balance, trivialities for what they are; the little lakes, sometimes mere puddles, full of
tadpoles and fishes and insects, to show you that life sprouts anywhere, that your
own, for all its seeing importance to you, cannot mean so much in the big scheme of
living.

Perhaps you have a problem. Some would-be advisers say sleep over it. I say,
as another would-be adviser, walk it. Walk it and see it from different angles. Walk it
and see it for the first time against the background of the whole universe. And while
walking, says an expert on the subject, “think tall, pull your chin up and throw your
chest forward no matter how heavy a burden you carry on your shoulder.” With your
sense of proportion restored by quiet deliberation, and by the palpable sympathy of
Nature all around you, you strike at one solution, then another. Your judgement,
made clear by the calmness brought about by walk and your surroundings, become
sound and wise. You reach a decision, and it is generally good.

Walk and know yourself. You will be surprised to find out what an enjoyable
companion you can be to yourself. Don’t be like the man who gets so bored being
left alone with his thoughts that he has to have a book with him all the time he is not
with people. Books have their place, too, and an important place it is, but so have
walking and getting acquainted with yourself. Just thresh out the little doubts you
have regarding this and that, mull over remarks made by your friends or office
mates, study the personalities you have come across during the day. It’s a
fascinating pastime. And all this while you are taking your walk.

Shall we walk this once then, Milady? To keep your waist slim, to make you
charming and exciting. For slimness is contributory to charm and exactingness. How
about the other benefits? Well, if in addition to the streamline, Milady can also derive
the other good effects, more power to her, I say. If not, because she is simply not the
kind, more so because it is not in her to be alive and interesting, to play with fancy
and imagination, more so, I say, let her walk, and at least, be, God bless her, slim
and comely figure.