LISTEN. It's Opening Day, deja vu all over again. Yogi probably didn't say that ("I didn't say everything I said") but Mr. Cub definitely did say let's play two! Lucky me, I get to play four today and tonight.
Nearly every philosopher-poet worth his salt has voiced similar sentiments. Erasmus recommended a little walk before supper and “after supper do the same.” Thomas Hobbes had an inkwell built into his walking stick to more easily jot down his brainstorms during his rambles. Jean- Jacques Rousseau claimed he could only meditate when walking: “When I stop, I cease to think,” he said. “My mind only works with my legs.” Søren Kierkegaard believed he’d walked himself into his best thoughts. In his brief life Henry David Thoreau walked an estimated 250,000 miles, or ten times the circumference of earth. “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits,” wrote Thoreau, “unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from worldly engagements.” Thoreau’s landlord and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson characterized walking as “gymnastics for the mind...”
"Gymnastics for the mind" could just be another name for philosophy, which I follow William James in defining simply as "an unusually stubborn effort to think clearly." And sometimes, philosophy is an equally stubborn effort to stop over-thinking. Woody Allen's character (in Manhattan was it, Ed?) said the brain is our most over-rated organ.
Another baseball sage, Johnny Damon, once said that thinking too much only hurts the team. "Ninety percent mental"? We'll see about that too.
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