“A PHILOSOPHY OF WALKING” by Frédéric Gros

When I was young I used to walk everywhere: to the school, to the library. In the summer, for three months of school break, I used to walk barefoot everywhere. That was my reality back then and I was not thinking that by walking barefoot I was in touch with the earth. I just felt an extraordinary pleasure walking barefoot. 
When I got married, my husband introduced me to his kind of walking: on the streets of the city he grew up in. This is how I learned to appreciate and admire the architecture of the buildings. Many years later, together, we enjoyed walking the streets of so many different towns and cities around the world.

Last year I bought “A PHILOSOPHY OF WALKING” written by Frédéric Gros and I learned about walking from Nietzsche, Kant, and Rousseau’s point of view. But also from Frédéric’s perspective:

“First of all, there is the suspensive freedom that comes by walking, even a simple short stroll: throwing off the burden of cares, forgetting business for a time.

What I mean is that by walking you are not going to meet yourself.
By walking, you escape from the very idea of identity, the temptation to be someone, to have a name and a history.
Being someone is all very all for star parties where everyone is telling their story, it’s all very well for psychologists’ consulting rooms.
But isn’t being someone also a social obligation which trails in its wake–for one has to be faithful to the self-portrait–a stupid and burdensome fiction?

The freedom in walking lies in not being anyone; for the walking body has no history, it is just an eddy in the stream of immemorial life”.

Editura: VERSO, London-NY, 2023