You run ahead —
Are you doing it as a shepherd?
A third case would be the fugitive.
Do you want to walk along?
Or walk ahead?
Or walk by yourself?
One must know what one wants
and that one wants.

— excerpt Twilight Of The Idols or How to Philosophize With A Hammer
By Friedrich Nietzsche

Walking is a basic human activity.  A benchmark of development comes when one learns to walk.  Daily observing a eight week old grandchild — she is able to fulfill her desire to eat, take in nourishment, and to sleep.  She is looking around becoming more interested in the sights and sounds of her world.  Language is months in the future.  I’d bet that she already has a desire to walk, to have a closer look at sights and sounds.  She grows stronger by the day.

The term we use for that state of mind is curiosity.  Many of us, adults have lost our curiosity, the drive to move in closer in order to know.  We are seduced to believe that it is normal to take in easily available junk food; the titillation of social media, the smack-down war of words about politics. Never mind the toxic caricature, the snide character smear, etc.; a sedentary, spoon fed diet of Lucky Charms, three meals a day.

Walking takes effort, takes considerable skill  — an act of constant falling as one catches oneself to move forward against the pull of gravity.  Becoming a toddler is no mean feat.  To be fully alive is to have a tolerance for risk.  To know, to feel that you are always falling — and yet to move ahead anyway.  Walking is an act of resistance to the pull of the mass at one’s feet.

I really like the words by Nietzsche.  It pays to reflect upon one’s walking orientation.  There’s always a reason for the position one takes.  For the entirety of my adult life, I have preferred to walk ahead.  I speculate, surmise that I enjoy the adrenaline rush of “taking the point.”  Someone has to take the point.  I’d rather step up, do it myself, than follow someone else who takes the role reluctantly, hesitantly, and really does not want the job.  That is a recipe for failure all around.

Nietzsche spent a lot of time hiking in the Alps at Sils Maria, Switzerland.  He rented a room in the Durisch family’s house in Sils Maria for seven summers (1881 and 1883 – 88).  Nietzsche knew about walking in the mountains.

Do we not need to get back to the mountains?

If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure.   — Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols