Just Decide to Walk

Learning from Kierkegaard

Somehow I recently came across a Søren Kierkegaard quote on Twitter that I had never seen before.

I don’t say it that way because I am a connoisseur of Søren Kierkegaard content and expect to have recognized the quote—I’ve only just started reading Kierkegaard—I say that because apparently the quote is one of his best-known.

Kierkegaard on Walking

I had a hard time nailing down where he wrote it, but apparently he wrote this in a letter to his often-ill sister-in-law whose frequent bedridden days left her depressed.¹

Here’s the quote:

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

Kierkegaard was known for his daily walks—he definitely made his strolls a part of his personality and public character. But I dunno, this seems like kinda a jerk thing to write to your depressed, bedridden sister-in-law who maybe would like to go for walks but couldn’t. But who knows? Maybe it wasn’t written to her after all. Regardless, it’s good advice.

Nothing clears my head and helps me work through issues like a nice, long walk. Of course it is preferable to walk in beautiful fall or spring weather with a nice vista to enjoy along the way. But if you’re like me, you often need to make due with 100º strolls in suburban neighborhoods more often than not.

an unedited picture from my evening walk this past sunday night

I’ve never really read much of Kierkegaard outside of quotes I see here or there, but I just recently read Kierkegaard: A Single Life by Stephen Backhouse, and am now making my way through Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, which is, as it sounds, a collection of Kierkegaard’s spiritual writings compiled by Charles Moore.

Kiekegaard on Cowardice and Decision

I came across a section right at the beginning of the Provocations book in which Kierkegaard writes about decision and cowardice. He writes in “Dare to Decide”:

Cowardice settles deep in our souls like the idle mists on stagnant waters. From it arise unhealthy vapors and deceiving phantoms. The thing that cowards fears most is decision; for decision always scatters the mists, at least for a moment. Cowardice thus hides behind the thought it likes best of all: the crutch of time. Cowardice and time always find a reason for not hurrying, for saying, “Not today, but tomorrow,” whereas God in heaven and the eternal say: “Do it today. Now is the day of salvation.”

This quote and others surrounding it merit a whole piece to themselves, and I’ll work on that eventually. But consider that little snippet today as you think about decisions, spiritual or not, that you need to make but are afraid to.

I don’t think we’re right to read Kierkegaard as simply talking about matters of salvation or some sort of basic procrastination, but maybe something in between the two.

It is so much easier, in life, to kick the can down the road than to pick it up and throw it away, if you will.

I don’t want to go to the doctor to have that pain addressed. I may get some bad news about its root cause. I’ll just do it later.

I don’t want to have that hard conversation with a friend. It will be so awkward! Maybe next week.

I don’t want to start reading my Bible today. I’m tired. It will still be on my nightstand tomorrow, anyway.

We face decisions every day that we are tempted to kick down the road out of cowardice, and we fail to count the cost of our indecisiveness. We would benefit from a walk, as Kierkegaard would advise.

Kierkegaard shows us, or at least he’s shown me, that prideful cowardice shudders in fear at decisiveness and revels in indecision. It’s one of many lessons I’ve learned from the grumpy, old Dane in the last couple of weeks. I have found myself resounding with Kierkegaard as much as just about any Christian thinker I’ve ever read—even if some of his personal conduct is less-than-admirable. As much as his writing makes me feel not-so-alone in some of my ways of thinking, he’s definitely not the kind of guy I would have wanted to hang out with. But that’s fine because he probably wouldn’t have cared.

Decide to Walk

The last couple of weeks in Middle Tennessee, the temperature has hovered around the mid-90s with heat indices regularly rising well into the triple digits.

It is not easy to go for walks these days, which makes it that much more difficult to clear my head—the treadmill at the gym just doesn’t quite do it for me. It isn’t hard to see why I often find myself slipping into some low-grade form of seasonal depression around this time of year.

Cowardice likely loves oppressive heat insofar as it precipitates indecision about whether or not to endeavor on a walk.

But sometimes, you just have to decide to walk anyway.

1. I could only find vague mention of this on the internet, so I don’t know if it’s accurate. But it seems to be a legit quote—the source of it is just hard to officially pinpoint, I guess.