Silent Walking & Mutual Display

Have you joined the Silent Walking movement?

There’s a new trend on TikTok. It’s called #SilentWalking. It’s a practice of walking outside for 30 minutes a day, leaving your podcasts and playlists behind.

It’s an opportunity to reconnect with yourself and the natural world, unmediated by technology.

Of course, this just used to be called… walking. It was the only option before the smartphone (or at least the Walkman). We like to rediscover and rebrand things we’ve had since the dawn of time.

Now, no one is actually claiming that this is a new practice. But it is a timely one.

It’s a mirror of our moment, reflecting both why we need these healthy habits but also why we can’t help but tell others about them.

What makes Silent Walking so attractive right now?

It’s not hard to imagine the physical and mental health benefits of feeling the breeze on your face and the dirt beneath your feet as your thoughts wander with you.

We step away from the screens. Exchange blue light for sunlight. Mute the constant noise. With AirPods absent, we can be more fully present to ourselves and the world around us.

Nature is calming. In the boundless overwhelm of online life, there’s something freeing about being in a particular place with no particular agenda.

But this detox from digital stimulants doesn’t come easily. There’s an initial separation anxiety as we walk away from our phones.

Do we want the quiet? Without distraction, what will fill the void?

One study found that, if left with no other options, people would rather shock themselves than sit alone with their thoughts.

This problem predates the Internet age. Blaise Pascal commented, “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” He said that we love busyness and distraction because it keeps us from having to think about our own mortality. He wrote this in the Seventeenth Century.

Silence and solitude confront us with the stark realities of our lives.

When we walk in the quiet, our unconscious thoughts begin to surface. Upset about your relationships? Disappointed with your life patterns? Anxious about the future? These feelings greet us in solitude, and they’re uncomfortable. But we need to sort through them.

However, there’s another kind of spontaneous thought that happens as we walk: dreaming of possibility.

Without everything else demanding our shrinking attention, mental pictures have space to form.

There’s a reason fresh ideas tend to come when you’re in the shower, mowing the lawn, or on a stroll. This is what’s called the diffuse mode of thinking. You’re not concentrating intently on a problem you’re trying to solve. You’re not trying to think about anything in particular at all. But somehow the solution comes.

Freed from familiar neural pathways, a wandering mind can chart new territory.

And this happens as we wander.

This is no doubt a healthy practice, and it’s one I follow. But the irony doesn’t escape me that there’s a hashtag #SilentWalkingTrend.

The TikTok creator inviting you to join the movement is walking with her phone-in-hand, selfie camera aimed at her, talking to an audience that isn’t physically present but never seems to be absent.

If an influencer goes on a walk in the woods, and no one sees it, did it happen?

If the walk is documented and published, is it silent?

The #HotGirlWalk had its moment. #SilentWalking is in.

Charles Taylor described our culture as characterized by “mutual display.” We live in a time that’s been drained of transcendence. As traditional beliefs and sources of meaning have lost their grip, we turn to showcasing our identities to the world, seeking validation.

Authenticity is the predominant virtue. But, paradoxically, we signal our authenticity to others, hoping it will be affirmed in return.

It’s a performed identity. We need to make sure that others see our individuality. “I’m totally different. And my two million followers agree.”

David Foster Wallace argued that the prevalence of television turned us into watchers who expect to be watched. Without God, he says, the Nielsen rating system is the all-seeing eye. And in the Internet age, we’re all Nielsen.

It’s one thing to be alone in creation, with your Creator.

But, as James K.A. Smith puts it, “If God is dead, the only audience left to confirm our virtue is one another.”

And so we might escape the digital deities for a few minutes, only to return from our pilgrimage to testify about it.

After all, if we’re going to make such sacrifices, we might as well earn social credit for it.

Platforms like TikTok allow ideas to spread far and wide quickly. Some are harmful. Many are helpful. Wellness content is especially popular right now.

Technology can put us in contact with current best practices, even if we’re rediscovering some ancient paths to walk.

But the question of who I am when no one is liking or following me—that is the very thing that walking in silence can lead us to confront.