Walking

December, 18 2024 • 1 min read • 272 words

I found myself walking outside and staring at the leaves. Walking is something I find myself doing when I’m deep in thought, pondering about the complexities of life. Usually, it is in a circle in whatever room I find myself to occupy. I mindlessly stare at the floor, automatically and unconsciously moving one foot after another. I tend to walk in a counterclockwise circle, but I consciously switch to avoid any uneven wearing of my knees.

Something in my conscious likes stepping on interesting patterns. Generally, it is where the wooden boards of the floor I’m standing on meet, randomly peppering the floor with a cornucopia of segments that my feet follow. If the floor is tiled, I might move around like a knight in chess, moving only 2 tiles up and one to the side on each step. This time, I was stepping on the scattered leaves of the winter ground.

It came to me that I must look ridiculous. To someone on the outside, it appears as if I’m stumbling forward like a drunkard with no rhyme or reason. To me, everything made sense. One leaf to the next, like a frog jumping from lilypad to lilypad. It dawned on me how within this kernel of thought held a very human archetype: the outside and the inside, the strange and the familiar, of chaos and order, to be known or misunderstood. How often there are barriers between people that make each look incomprehensible to another. Like all human archetypes, it spoke to me; it is what it means to be human. My mind moved on as I stepped on the next leaf.