During my morning walk I hit a dead end! ‘Verboden’ the sign yelled. Forbidden to take another step I turned around and backtracked to find a new path. It’s a notion that I am playing with in my days. This idea of motion and momentum.

Motion : the action or process of moving or being moved.

Of course this is not a new idea. Remember Isaac Newton? The guy err genius who wrote the laws of motion. Laws that encompass movement, force, inertia, mass, momentum, acceleration, impulse and interactions. I’m not qualified nor gifted enough to explain the physics Newton is talking about but those words are all part of this philosophy of motion and I’m breathing them into my days.

Inertia: a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.

Returning home from walking the camino I have had this strong desire to move, or, perhaps to keep moving, to be going forward with some direction. Not moving homes or countries (although I did play with that idea) but to be moving forward and productively in my daily life. And not with great force nor with any ideals of needing to produce beyond what feels right – just in a flow of motion. Simply, the kind of flow that prevents the inertia or stagnation.

Often I walk the same paths in the local woods during my morning walks. These past few days I’ve been walking with a new hiking partner. No, not really a new one actually an old one. The one who I hiked through my 20’s with and he has been forcing me to change it up and walk some new paths. Funny we can walk the same woods alone and have completely different routes isn’t it. A little shift in how we do or think about things and there is newness in an old way or place. (Where were we in our 30’s you ask? We were having babies … lots of them and doing that thing where we got busy playing house (grown ups) … we shed the busy and desire to accumulate beyond what we need in our 40’s, that’s why we are here living this crazy dream).

While I was on the camino he (life partner up there) decided he would do the 170km ‘Tour du Mont Blanc’. It’s a trek that crosses three countries over varied landscapes, glaciers and rugged peaks. It’s tale about interactions causing forward motion. One impulse by me: the desire to do something adventurous for change (hike for One Girl)  and acting on it – him: responding to that movement and acting on his impulse and desires. In fact bigger than that is shows how far we’ve come.  After five months of camper-vanning around Europe last year (shaking off big city, stressful corporate life and a truckload of our own bullshit) we decided our lives would always be adventurous.

I think inertia can be a silent assassin. If we do nothing and remain unchanged we silence things. Important things. Our dreams, souls, curiosity, spirit, charity, heart and we forget how to imagine and how to notice those wondrous interactions that occur because of nature, coincidences and the flow of motion. And if we’re not nurturing these parts of ourselves where is our momentum coming from? Are we awake in our lives? Are we driven by what makes us feel honest?

So I’m practicing and playing with motion in my life. I continue in small steps walking, feeling and moving. Literally whispering to myself ‘motion’ and moving in my actions. Moving towards what feels honest, valuable, productive. Closer towards the people I love, the people on my page, the words I want to write,  the stories I want to share, the parent I want to be, the photography that guides me to create, the language classes to learn, the kitchen to bake, the adventures that challenge, the routine that creates a foundation, the necessity of work to support my family, the trust in the life we are building, the standing for things that matter, the woods for sturdiness, activity and to create the space for ideas to spark, flow and connect. And with each step forward I am one step away from inertia.