You go outside to clear your head. But along the way you keep watching who is behind you, who is coming towards you and what made that sound. You have been for a walk. It was hardly relaxing. Then someone tells you that you should spend more time in nature.
You can be somewhere without really experiencing it
A peaceful setting tells us little about what you experience there. You can walk among the trees and constantly check your surroundings. Sit by the water and be occupied mostly with what might go wrong. What relaxes someone else can take a great deal of energy from you.
I recognise that from my own life. After I left the navy, my surroundings had changed. I no longer wore a uniform. But I still checked where the exit was and what was happening around me. In De Manke Wolf, I describe how I was back, but had not truly come home.
That distinction helped me understand why a different place did not automatically bring a different experience. I took my state of alertness with me. Anyone who only saw where I was could not see how much work was still going on inside me. Being told to enjoy myself did not address what was happening to me.
Joris described the difference in a single walk
Joris Toebinte described how he struggled with civilian life after twelve years in the Belgian Special Forces. Looking back on our work together, he wrote:
“Walking in nature became a pleasure again, rather than a programmed military patrol in my head.” — Joris Toebinte (translated from Dutch)
He could already walk. What changed was his experience of walking. Where he had mainly been on alert, there was pleasure again. Later in his account, he writes about creativity and enthusiasm returning. He regained more than just the ability to get through something.
Being able to enjoy an experience again
That is why I ask more when someone says they still go everywhere. What is it like to be there? Can you become absorbed in a conversation or a view? Or are you mainly occupied with making sure nothing happens? That tells us something different from the distance you walked or the appointments you kept.
I am now free of the emotional charge of the old trauma that used to govern my life. Those events are part of my history; they no longer drive my life as they did then. That is how I know what the difference between coping with something and truly enjoying it can mean.
Where would you like to go again without dreading it beforehand? You do not have to turn that into a grand goal. Coming home from a walk with something lovely to tell someone about could already make a world of difference to you.