“I try to think, but nothing happens”

Sometimes my thoughts are all entangled. Especially if I am angry.  Even if I know I have to sort it out, and know I have to find a solution, nothing happens when I try to think about it, as Winnie The Pooh says. Even worse, to me more often than not, too much happens, at  once.

As in this tree, where the saplings were too close. Even if they were growing, they were stifling each other. It is just too much going on, at the same spot, at the same time. Even if there is lots of energy spent considering the mess of thoughts in my head, there isn’t actually any thinking going on. As these saplings could have grown into two big trees if they only had been rooted a bit apart, my thoughts get so much clearer if I am able to view them from a distance.

This is not a parable or a spiritual exercise, even if it works as both, it is just a very simple thing to do. The walking solution is not mine. To go for a walk when things get entangled has been the tried and true go-to solution  for ages. The old greek philosophers did it, Soren Kierkegaard did it, and every angry teenager still does it, when storming out of the door, slamming it and running “out of here”. It works. Not as solution, but as a tool. To me it is as if my body tells me, you are too much part of this to think clearly, get out of it so you can view it all from a distance.

Of course this is a walk that has to be done in circles, when I have cooled down, when I have got a new perspective on things, I need to get back to the persons or problems I left. Hopefully I had  been able to leave without doing anything that makes it difficult to apply my calmed down reason on it all. And sometimes, well even if it is hard to admit, sometimes it is not even a problem anymore…..which leaves me pondering what was this all about? Which actually could set me off on another walk.

“I have walked away from all my sorrows and illnesses…just keep going and it all goes well”
Soren Kierkegaard