Dear Lucca,
I started writing this letter to you about a month ago. But with your birthday coming up this weekend, I thought that I should probably get around to sharing it with you! You and Mom are still up in the mountains. Dad just got back to Charlotte. You guys have been up there for the past couple weeks while I’ve been coming up weekends and heading back for work weekdays. You are in your glory up there catching salamanders, newts (well, one that got away), and crawfish in the creeks. Every day is the same. Get up. Hunt for creatures. And take lots of walks with Alfred down to the end of the street and into the falls. Speaking of walking, I look forward to the day when this letter resonates with you. Love ya bud. See you Friday!!
“It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” - Nietzsche
Dear Lucca,
It’s Saturday morning around 9.30 AM. Mom’s out grocery shopping and you’re still in bed sleeping (you’ve been staying up late with Carter while we’ve all been stuck at home, which has made me and your Mom so happy to watch). I still get up early Saturday mornings to write and think and make sense of the week. The early hours, while you guys and most other people are sleeping, are my favorite part of the day. I enjoy the quiet and the solitude and the time to read and think and let my mind wander. This is what I want to share with you today.
We’ve now been home for several weeks and it looks like the rest of the school year will be canceled due to the Coronavirus which has turned into a global pandemic. Me and your Mom have played it safe and stayed home almost this entire time, although we have allowed you to play outside with the kids in the neighborhood (who we know have not gone anywhere) to let you blow off some steam and catch all of your lizards (I’ve lost count). Just a few weeks ago, it would have been crazy to think about something that could have shut down schools across the country, let alone the entire global economy. But here we are. It’s been a scary time, but the silver lining in my eyes has been the opportunity it’s provided us to spend time together.
One of the habits we’ve tried to maintain has been daily walks. I try to join your Mom and Alfred on their walk every morning (even though I’m usually running at full speed by then keeping up with the markets, which is an entirely different story). It’s good for me to step away and get some fresh air. And after dinner, we try to take a walk with you, Carter, and both dogs. You ride your bike. I take Stella (who is not doing well at all, and on several occasions, poops from beginning to end). And Mom takes Alfred who snorts like a pig, pulls and tugs, with Mom insisting the whole time, how good he is. : )
So I’ve been thinking about walking for a while and how good it is for all of us. And after reading a few things in a book called “Stillness is the Key” by Ryan Holiday, I wanted to take the time to share them with you. I believe the thoughts here are so very important for health and happiness. It’s hard to understand as a child, but as you grow, I hope you will revisit these notes. I’m still learning, and it’s still hard to step away, but every time I do, I am glad that I did.
So what is the big deal about walking? Let me try to explain.
Walking is how we release the stress and frustration that work inevitably creates. Today is a great example with the entire country on lock-down and stock markets in free fall. Your Dad is stressed, to say the least. Walking helps clear my head. If I can manage to do this consistently, a long enough walk will walk me right into a state of well-being and away from stress. There is really no problem that you can’t “walk away from.” A long walk can walk me right into my best thinking. Walking clears the mind and makes room for us to step away and allows us to make connections we wouldn’t otherwise make while bombarded with all the noise that encompasses our days.
In other words, walking sparks creativity. Research has shown that walkers perform better on tests that measure creative thinking during and after their walks. Here are several examples of “historic walkers” from Ryan Holiday:
- Nietzsche said that the ideas in Thus Spoke Zarathustra came to him on a walk.
- Nikola Tesla discovered the rotating magnetic field on a walk through a city park in Budapest in 1882.
- Ernest Hemingway would take long walks along the quais whenever he was stuck writing and needed to clarify his thinking.
- Charles Darwin’s daily schedule included several walks, as did those of Steve Jobs, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman who wrote that “I did the best thinking of my life on leisurely walks with Amos.” It was physical activity in the body that got his brain going.
- When Martin Luther King Jr. was a seminary student at Crozer, he took an hour walk each day through the campus woods to “commune with nature.”
- Walt Whitman and Ulysses S. Grant often bumped into each other on their respective walks around Washington, which cleared their minds and helped them think.
- Freud was known for his speedy walks around Vienna’s Ringstrasse after his evening meal.
- The composer Gustav Mahler spent as much as four hours a day walking, using this time to work through and jot down ideas.
- Ludwig van Beethoven carried sheet music and a writing utensil with him on his walks for the same reason.
How does walking do this? Through repetitive, ritualized, deliberate motion. The key is to be aware. To be present. To put your phone away. Along with all of life’s problems. Look down at your feet. Listen to the sound of the leaves crunching underfoot. Feel the ground pushing back against you. Breathe in. Breathe out. Get lost. Be unreachable. Go slowly.
It’s an affordable luxury available to us all. It’s not about burning calories or getting your heart rate up (although that’s equally important and a story for another day - me and you have had a blast working out around lunchtime on most days). On the contrary. Walking isn’t really about anything. And that’s the point. It’s about emptying the mind and noticing the beauty of the world around you.
Research has found that walking is as effective in treating depression as medication. Stress and difficulty can knock us down. It’s something your Dad has struggled with his entire life. Sitting at our computers, we are overwhelmed with information, with emails, with one thing after another. We should get walking. We should get outside of our heads and outside for a walk.
Walking provides another benefit that your Dad relies on to recharge. Similar to those early morning hours, walking (and the occasional motorcycle ride) is a source of solitude.
Like walking, there are many examples of history’s greatest thinkers, making time to be alone with their thoughts.
- Leonardo Da Vinci was notorious for leaving his studio and going for long walks by himself, carrying a notebook and simply looking and watching. Really seeing what was happening around him.
- Four-star Marine Corps general and former secretary of defense James Mattis has said that the single biggest problem of senior leadership in the Information Age is lack of reflection. “Solitude allows you to reflect while others are reacting. We need solitude to refocus on prospective decision-making, rather than just reacting to problems as they arise.”
- Microsoft founder Bill Gates makes time for a “Think Week” twice a year. He spends seven days alone in a cabin in the forest (which is EXACTLY why Dad bought our cabin the first place, and why we didn’t have TV, Cable, Internet, or a telephone up there for years). He wrestles with complex topics, contradictory ideas, and challenging concepts. But despite the struggle and the hard work, he emerges recharged and refocused.
So does your Dad. We carry the quiet stillness of the woods back to the complicated world we live in. With the benefit of solitude, we can really sit down and think without the daily interruptions of life and work. We can see further. I might be alone up there but I’m hardly lonely. I’ll read hundreds of papers, dozens of books, quietly for hours at a time. I’ll write long memos to my team, letters to investors, or just journal to clarify my thinking (again, a concept deserving of an entirely separate letter). A long walk or a challenging hike is the only break you need.
It’s difficult to understand yourself if you are never by yourself. It’s difficult to have much in the way of clarity and insight if your life is a constant party and your home is a construction site (ahem … our house has been under construction for months now).
Sometimes you have to disconnect in order to better connect with yourself and with the people you love. Sometimes you need space - even if only for a few stolen hours - to think in quiet and solitude. It’s hard to make that time. It’s hard to getaway. We have responsibilities. We have family. But they will be better for our temporary disappearance. Because we will carry back with us the stillness from our solitude in the form of patience, understanding, gratitude, and insight. I am lucky that your Mom has always understood this about me. She knows when I need time away and on numerous occasions, just sends me up to the mountains by myself.
Most people don’t have enough solitude in their lives because they don’t seek out or cultivate silence. It’s unfortunate because it prevents stillness and reflection and stymies good ideas, which are almost always hatched in solitude (or on a walk).
Breakthroughs happen with stunning regularity in the shower or on a long hike. Where don’t they happen? Shouting in a bar. Three hours into a Netflix binge. In back-to-back-to-back meetings and phone calls. In solitude, time slows down.
But to get there, we need to put ourselves, physically, in the position to do that kind of deep work.
With practice, we can learn how to keep that solitude within us. We can learn to capture it in smaller doses. A few moments before going on stage for a talk or sitting in your hotel room before a meeting. The morning before the rest of the house wakes up. Or late in the evening after the world has gone to sleep.
Grab these moments. Schedule them. Cultivate them.
I love you bud. More than anything else in this world. Your Dad requires more space than most. Us introverts require more time alone to recharge. Unfortunately, this also means I’m constantly struggling with the guilt of not spending more time with you. I know I’ll look back on this extraordinary time and regret not taking an hour or two every day to home school you. To explore. To play. To build. To learn. I’m trying. And I think you know this. You are exceptionally perceptive. More so than your Dad. I think you intuitively understand this about me. Still, I try. And I will continue to try and to improve. I keep telling myself that we have so much time. And many of these things were impossible to teach or show you when you were younger. But then I turned around and you were turning SEVEN. I’m terrified that when I turn around again, you’ll be FOURTEEN. And then on your way out of the house. Before that happens, I hope we can go for a long walk.
Love,
Dad