Is there more to walking than just placing one foot in front of the other?

Aug 2, 2014 23:57 GMT  ·  By
Mysterious woman in black seen walking across the US was on a spiritual journey
   Mysterious woman in black seen walking across the US was on a spiritual journey

These past few days, the Internet has been in an uproar over the news about a mysterious woman dressed in a black robe from head to toe who left Alabama about two months ago and walked all the way to Virginia.

The woman was photographed by quite a lot of people who chanced to cross paths with her, and groupies (if I might be so bold as to call them so) even put together a Facebook account documenting her journey.

The woman's story also took Instagram and Twitter by storm, and the media was quick to make the most of all the attention she was getting and plastered her face across headline articles.

To be perfectly honest, I too got behind this trend and wrote a piece on her. And yes, I'm writing yet another one, so feel free to point the finger at me and accuse me of riding on her popularity to score some points for myself.

Before you do that, however, you should know that this piece is not so much about the woman in black walking across the US per se, as it is about what her story should teach us. Simply put, it's about walking as a spiritual experience.

First Off, Some Basic Facts

Before I start babbling about how there is more to walking than just placing one foot in front of the other, here are a few basic facts you should know about the now famous woman in black walking across the US.

She is a 54-year-old mother of two and an army veteran. Her name is Elizabeth Poles, and she has a brother named Raymond. She lost her husband in 2008 and her father in 2013, and she used to be a patient of veteran affairs hospitals.

According to her brother, she left Motts, Alabama, two months ago, on a Sunday, after attending service at a local church. “When my wife and I picked her up [from church], she shaved her head and she was asking me where can I buy long black robes. That’s when she started traveling,” Raymond said.

By the looks of it, the woman walked all the way to the city of Winchester in Alabama because this is the place where she spent part of her childhood together with her father. Her journey took her through Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio.

People's Reaction to the Woman in Black

While walking from Alabama to Virginia, the woman tried to keep a low profile and hardly ever spoke to anybody. She refused accommodation or food, and simply stuck to her journey. When she did speak, she merely did so to remind people that all she wanted was to be left alone.

It pains me to say this, but if we're being completely honest, we have to admit that this woman ended up making headlines and being insanely popular on social media because many were quick to label her behavior as downright bizarre and because pretty much everybody likes an oddity every now and then.

In other words, the woman got this much attention (despite pointing out that people should just mind their own business on several occasions) because, in this day and age, walking from one corner of a country to another sounds a bit insane, seeing how we have cars and trains and whatnot at our disposal.

Interestingly enough, pretty much all the folks keeping tabs of this woman's journey figured out that there was more to her walking across the US than simply getting some much needed exercise. This woman was on a spiritual quest, and this simple truth did not go unnoticed.

Walking as a Spiritual Experience

If you ask me, what sparked people's interest in this woman's story was not so much the fact that she kept walking for days on end from one American state to another. The reason why people took a fancy to her was because she reminded them that walking was not just about toning the body.

Except for those who slept from the beginning up to the very end of each and every history lesson they attended in college, pretty much everybody knows that us humans do sometimes get the urge to walk over considerable distances not to get in shape, but to clear our minds.

Such journeys are called pilgrimages, and they have been around for centuries. The thing is that, more often than not, a pilgrimage's destination is a place recognized by many to be sacred. In the case of this woman, it was the city of Winchester which, as mentioned, holds a special significance for her.

What I wish to draw your attention to is the fact that, be it every once in a while, walking can turn out to be a spiritual experience. Mind you, I'm not talking about walking from your car to the entrance of a local supermarket, or from your car to a fast food joint. I'm talking about walking to find inner peace.

Most of us have quite a lot of things troubling us on a daily basis (all hail modern society!), and walking and focusing on our surroundings while doing so enables us to block out these things, gain some perspective on the world around us, and quiet the mind.

I'm no scientist, but I'm thinking that the fact that, at the end of the day, walking does indeed count as a form of physical exercise also has a say in the matter. Simply put, I'm guessing that the rush of oxygen to the brain we get from walking also helps silence the thoughts that keep bothering us.

What I'm trying to say is that what we should take from 54-year-old Elizabeth Poles' story is the fact that, every once in a while, we might want to take the time to go for a walk not hoping to burn some calories, but looking to gain some perspective.

I'm not sure you've noticed this, but time with ourselves is not exactly easy to come by these days, and that's a shame because, social events and gatherings aside, it's our inner self we should never lose contact with. If we want to keep our mental sanity, that is.