There’s something to a sleeping city which is both beautiful and scary. The streets which are usually teaming with people are now empty, the lights are off and everything is perfectly quite. It’s eerie to walk through neighborhoods which you normally only drive through, to stroll through empty streets you wouldn’t notice during the day. For me, this time of the night is a time to treasure with a walk by myself or with a partner.
My Late Night Tradition
My tradition of late night walks started a few years ago when a friend of mine stayed with me for a few months. Each night, sometime between 10pm and 1am, we would take my dog for an hour long walk. The exercise (for both us and the dog) was a nice side effect, but what I treasured most was the conversation. There’s something to the quiet streets and silent houses which gave us the feeling of privacy, a feeling of being alone in the world, two men and a dog and this feeling made the words and thoughts flow out. We would talk about everything from video games and girls to politics and money. We shared our hopes, complaints, dreams and advice. To this day, my friend will occasionally come over late at night and we’ll go out for one of these walks.
I Walk A Lonely Road…
After my friend moved out, I kept on walking late at night, even when I had no one to walk with. Sometimes I would use this time to call my father in Israel and chat with him about various events, talking with him as I had done with my friend. At other times I would ponder my thoughts, alone in this empty night time world. If you haven’t experienced a late night world, you can’t understand, but there’s something about that quiet and stillness which is really conducive to introspection, just as it is to conversation. I think it’s the illusion that you are alone in the world which makes the dreary details of everyday life fall away and allows you to be really open with another person or with yourself. Whatever it is (and I realize I’m in serious danger of getting positively poetic here), I highly recommend that you experience it at least once in your life.
I realize this weekend is new years and there’s going to be a lot of drinking, but maybe you could take at least one of these nights and use it for a late night walk? Spend a few minutes after the parties have died down, the people have gone home and the drunks are asleep in the bushes to take a walk. Enjoy the silence and the emptiness and ponder the year that has gone by and the new year that is now starting. Be honest with yourself about what went right, what went wrong, what surprised you and what you missed. Perhaps you could take a friend or a loved one and discuss philosophy, loved ones lost and hopes for the future. Whatever you might do, take this chance to be alone for a moment, in a way that’s virtually impossible in our busy times. Cherish that feeling, that quiet and solitude, use it to gain clarity and then hold on to that clarity as you return to your home.
###
Happy new years everyone. I want to thank all of you who have been with me for the past few months for supporting Equally Happy. I appreciate your retweets, stumbleupons, diggs, Facebook sharing, emailing links and all the other things you’re doing to build our community. Here’s to a wonderful year gone by and to an even better one coming up.
