Nietzsche was known for a few utterances. And for being a prolific walker. (When he lived in Eze, France, he made a daily habit of scaling a steep 1,400-foot mountain to reach a medieval village perched above his home.) It’s in this context of walking he shared this:
“Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself”.
So said Fred in 1874.
His antidote was to walk. Walking, which is quite slow and roughly at the speed of considered thought, quashes haste. Which allows us to play with the inverse of Nietzsche’s observation. Walking reduces haste, which, in turn, brings you closer to yourself.
So said me, just now.
We really do know that we don’t want to flee from ourselves. We’d like to sit calmly with ourselves. The haste isn’t the problem. It’s the frantic, itchy compulsion to ricochet outside ourselves rather than sit in the calm of our own “is-ness” that’s the problem. Why do we ricochet? What are we so afraid of within the four walls of our being?
PS I’ve explored some other techniques for sitting with yourself here and here.
