Most will agree that taking a walk is a great way to decompress when one is under pressure. It seems there’s something effective about getting out in the fresh air as a way to clear one’s head.
But, while walking out on Rockland Breakwater recently, I realized the open air was only aiding me in spinning even more rapidly and tightly some thoughts and worries that had been troubling me of late. While I had set out to step away from those concerns, instead I found myself strategizing and re-strategizing, thinking and rethinking, calculating and recalculating the same things that had held my mind in uncomfortable thrall back in my home office and often in the middle of the night, too.
With a lighthouse serving as destination and literal beacon at its end, the breakwater itself is a nearly milelong engineering marvel built of about 700,000 tons of granite between 1881 and 1899. Those who choose the breakwater as a walking path will tell you the round-trip distance is just right for a relaxing ramble. As I often have found, it also makes an ideal distance for a good think.
However, thinking was not my goal during my recent outing there. What I wanted was the relaxing, head-clearing ramble — and about halfway out on the breakwater, I realized I was not getting this. It occurred to me the very thing that makes me good at my work — my skills at planning ahead, multitasking and carrying several projects at once in my mind — also were making me super at hanging onto my worries. Stumbling on an irregularity in the granite, I realized my multitasking mentality was undermining my peace of mind and my physical safety, too.
While my stubbed toe smarted, I credited that bump in the breakwater’s granite for signaling me to pay attention to where I was. I thanked the breakwater for reminding me to “be here now,” not just physically and practically, but mentally. It was clear that walking there distracted by worries was not particularly safe.
After all, most of the breakwater’s granite is shaped into huge square or rectangular blocks, but in hundreds of places, odd-shaped granite pieces have been set in to fill irregular-shaped spaces, and the interstices in this are legion. I was fortunate I had not stepped into a gap and turned my ankle or worse.
By pausing and taking in this special expanse of stone, I realized there was a certain sense of wonder there, which had eluded me while worries had crowded my consciousness. When I turned my attention to where I was, I discovered admiration for the effort it must have taken to fit those giant blocks of stone together, and I found fascination in small things such as the sea-salty rim left behind by a puddle that had dried in the sun and wind.
I also knew my worries were small things in time’s grand scheme, and they would one day have to pass. By the time I arrived at the lighthouse, I had begun to feel mentally refreshed, even a little bit jubilant, like a girl on an adventure.
And this girlishness prevailed as I made my return trip to shore, so that I gave a name to the one tall slab of granite that stood above the others along the rocky route. When I walk out there with worries again, I hope my “Sentry Rock” will stand sentinel again, exhorting me to “be here now,” reminding me to watch my step and to reclaim my sense of wonder.