How to Wander
The 3 Practices of Good Wandering
If Wandering is good for you, the next question is how do you do it?
Wandering means getting out of the day to day world, the mundane, and into the special world where our minds and understanding expand.
This is done by engaging your intuition, and trusting your group, the world, and your vastly experienced unconscious mind to influence your decisions to bring you to something more meaningful than what your analytical mind was likely to find.
To do this, there are 3 practices, all of which are simple to learn, and difficult to master. They are...
- Make frequent, frivolous decisions
- Engage in variable intensity
- Respond to subtle input
Let's look at each one in a little more detail below...
1 - Make Frequent, Frivolous Decisions
When you are commuting or traveling with a purpose, it takes a big reason to delay or divert you from your destination. But when you're wandering, the goal is much looser, and thus it is far, far easier to alter your path.
The idea of frequent, frivolous decisions is simple. Make a lot of low-effort decisions quickly.
When I'm wandering with other experienced wanderers, this looks slightly chaotic. We might stop four times in a block to admire street art, or catch a quick conversation with a local, or quickly duck into a church, bar, cemetery, or beautiful lobby, just to see what it looks like.
And when someone makes a decision in the group, the others get to decide whether they'll follow, or wait. Want to slap a sticker on a street light? Yeah we'll hold here for a second, and take the opportunity to look around.
When you're wandering, choosing to turn left instead of right is a frivolous decision.
Choosing to buy a pack of gum is a frivolous decision.
Choosing to speak to someone is a frivolous decision.
Choosing to walk through a door is a decision.
Just as is choosing to turn around and walk right back out is a frivolous decision too.
Make frequent, frivolous decisions, and it begins to short-circuit the analytical and socially cautious parts of the mind, allowing the wanderer to more freely experience the place they are, and being more human.
2 - Engage in Variable Intensity
Wandering should usually be easy and fun. But sometimes it should have moments that are more challenging.
Sometimes you walk up a big flight of stairs. Sometimes you take the elevator.
Sometimes you go somewhere where the people aren't like you. Sometimes you wander in your own backyard.
Physically, emotionally, intellectually, gastronomically, the best wandering happens when you're willing to vary the intensity.
That means don't always make the easiest decision. But also, don't always make the hardest decision either.
3 - Respond to Subtle Input
We learn by connecting stuff we don't know to stuff we do know. If you caught fishhooks with fishhooks, the more fishhooks you throw in the water, the more you're going to catch.
Smell something? Investigate it. Comment on it. Wonder about it.
See a bit of art smooshed into the sidewalk? Take a picture, speculate as to what it means.
See a person doing something out of the ordinary? Enjoy it. Appreciate it.
Get a tingling feeling in your stomach? Turn around and walk the other way.
The world is infinitely complex, but in our mundane lives we necessarily exclude a lot of subtle information so we can do our work.
There isn't the time to think about the deeper meaning of an advertisement, or the motivations of the builders of a sculpture.
But when you're wandering, subtle input is what leads us to the discoveries and revelations that wandering promises us. (Remember, for 90% of our existence, our species' used wandering as the primary way to collect new resources.)
And because you're making frequent, frivolous decisions, you can respond to input by taking a few extra seconds or minutes to experience something that usually you would brush right past.
Go for a 10-Minute Wander
Even in just 10 minutes wandering can change the way you think and feel. Go for a quick wander right now, and to try and to engage all three of the above practices.
If you normally go right out of the door, go left. (Frequent, frivolous decisions)
If you usually walk fast, walk really slow. (Variable intensity)
If you normally tune it out, think about ways that people have changed the physical environment. Who built this stuff? Why like this? (Subtle input)
There is infinite variety in how you apply the principles of wandering. Take my suggestions, or come up with your own. I promise that if you focus on these 3 practices while wandering, you will make amazing discoveries.
You will see things in the built environment that you never noticed before, have realizations about yourself, and gain insight into the workings of the larger world around you, all because you made the conscious decision to wander - a practice which quite literally made us human.
Thanks for reading,
Dan L. Flag
Dan Flag
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