Of long solitary walks

This is possibly the best way to relieve stress and frustration, to think, or just to kill some time.

I took one of my frequent walks today from LKCSB through the SMU concourse, down Orchard Road and ending at Scotts Road. It is especially enjoyable because I can immerse in the bustling activities of the area, brush shoulders with fellow pedestrians yet have the luxury of shutting out the noise by plugging into my favorite music.

Somehow when you take out the dimension of sound, the mind becomes clearer, and the world much more pleasant. It doesn’t matter whether the music is Vivaldi’s vibrant sound of spring, Eason Chan’s cheesy love songs, or hard rock screaming pain and impending doom. Take out all the white noise and the other senses become sharper. It becomes easier to concentrate and think, and when not thinking about anything in particular, the mind becomes observant and imaginative.

On a purposeless long walk alone, there is no one to listen or talk to, no meeting time to rush for, no places to go, no reason whatsoever to be doing whatever I’m doing. That is when I notice buildings, signboards and people. Scenarios of the lives of observed subjects flash through the sharper and more imaginative mind.

All this, from a smile or a frown on a passerby’s face, a young punk’s self-defining plunging v-neck cardigan and skinny jeans, a middle age business-attired man staring into space, words previously not noticed on a signboard, idle items on the side of the street like a golden bicycle I saw today.

I notice not passerbys and things, but imagine people with differing lives and people with ideas which they put into the things they created. Voyeurism or not, it is a funny mix of reality with unfounded ideas pulled off the top of the head that amazingly lifts the spirits in an unexplainable manner.

I’m glad my school is in an area with clustered buildings bustling with activity.