A while back, when I was unexpectedly unemployed, I wrote about the 19th century French flâneurs, taking inspiration from walkers who wandered with no clear destination, noticing everything and answering to no one. At the time I felt unmoored, and the flâneuse way of moving through the world gave some feeling some dignity and opportunity.
I have a job now. And for the first time since university, I walk to and from work, about 45 minutes each way. I went from purposeless wandering to purposeful getting-somewhere everyday.
On my commute, I have started noticing things. I’ll be running through my to-do list or thinking about a meeting, and then I’ll see spring flowers pushing back against the last of the cold, a shortcut worn into a lawn, decorations on a gate for no reason. I follow someone who looks like they know a faster route, only to watch them turn into their own house. I wonder how the person in a t-shirt in March is not absolutely freezing. I imagine what the person with the giant headphones is listening to.
I think my own thoughts for a while, and then the world interrupts me with a cute covered bridge I have never been on before, and I am back outside myself, making small observations and tiny decisions. It turns out that having somewhere to go makes me more present. Maybe it’s because this path I’m pain attention to is new right now, but I am getting a body and a brain workout each day.
I feel genuinely grateful for the job that gives my walk its direction, for my feet that make it possible, and for the path that keeps offering me things to look at. I feel healthy. It is time alone that connects me to everything around me. I am by myself, a stranger among people who know each other, yet I still feel in the middle of things.
I sometimes wonder whether the people driving past me are seeing any of it. And I think of the me four months ago who has seen none of it. I was still on the path to get here, even though I didn’t know where I was going.
