Heads Up!

The exit from my local station is a long ramp up to an overpass. I was in the middle of the pack leaving my train the other day, slowly weaving my way through the slower movers when it occurred to me how many of them were bent over almost double & staring at the ground.

Admittedly, I have trained myself not to look at my feet when I'm going down stairs, & I consciously straighten up against a natural desire to walk bent going up hill, but I had no real idea both of how prevalent that bending was, or to the degree most people bend. I mean, I know none of them can touch their toes, but do they have to walk as if they're on the verge of doing so?

I read an article about how the use of personal devices on trains means that people are straining their necks & bending their spines by constantly looking down. Personally, I don't buy into this, because I've always had books on trains, & many people had newspapers, so looking downwards has been there for as long as there's been trains.

However, walking with a device is a new thing - people now happily walk down the street peering into their clasped hands - & it's everyone else praying that they don't get walked into!
With this propensity to perambulating without a clue of your surrounds, it's no wonder that people watch their shoes when they haven't got their device blocking the view.

I thought about this more as I got clear of the rabble & started walking along the road. People don't think of walking as something they do - it's simply something they have to do to get from the train to the car. We have lost the art of walking as an activity - looking at the world around you & noticing stuff.

When I'm walking by a road, my eyes are somewhere around street level - cars going past. When I am walking in open space, my eyes are often in the distance or up in the sky. The only time when I might consider staring at the ground immediately before my feet is when I am moving very slowly through treacherous footing ... even then, it has to be particularly rough for the eyes to be of any use as to where to put the feet.

Let's face it, most of us have been pretty good at walking for most of our lives. Why is it that we still think of it as a difficult task that needs our full attention? Do we realise in ourselves that, through not walking, we have become so bad at doing it that we need to concentrate on each individual step in case we fall over or our feet fly off?

I say "practice". Just walk & realise that you are doing it. Appreciate your skill for motivating in a generally forward direction, & soon you will be so pleased with yourself that you will again be able to hold your head up high!