Open Space Open Mind

Everyday I spend an hour and a half commuting, but that’s not a complaint, walking to and from work it gives me the opportunity to clear my head. But what I have noticed recently is how the space I am walking through has an affect on my thought stream. I seem to go through phases of what I am contemplating on my commute. In the morning, when I first leave the house, I have practical and mundane deliberations on what time I will actually arrive at work,  what will I need to do when I get there and what will I get for lunch. A bit later in the journey, by the time I reach the centre of town, I find myself thinking about similarly pragmatic issues but perhaps on a larger scale - Is what I’m doing now really benefitting my future? what’s coming up in the pipeline? what’s my plan? These thought soon seem to trend into an almost narcissistic attitude about what I’m doing means to others by the time I am on New Walk - a fancy pedestrian path that cuts through Leicester. By the top of New Walk,  about 20 minutes down the line, that narcissistic attitude seems to implode on itself and I reside myself that what I do, ultimately, doesn’t matter to other people. Not that that’s necessarily a negative thought, if anything it’s quite liberating and positive. When I progress on to the comparatively vast expanse of Victoria Park I begin to alienate myself from my day-to-day life quite quickly. This is my favourite part of the commute. I my mind streams full of thoughts about the ‘bigger picture’ and my creative kick seems to come into play, thinking up an almost entire plot to some sort of story by the time I reach the opposite side of the park 10 minutes later.  Inconveniently I am soon to be at work after walking across Victoria Park and now completely out of the loop with what I am meant to be doing that day and rather I am frolicking on some abstract thought. The way home is the polar opposite, so that when I am back and have the freedom to create, I am stuck dwelling on the mundane issues of my life. 


I find this development of thought interesting though. I have contemplated wether it is just an innate thought track that my train of thought follows when given the time, wether my thoughts correlate to my distance from origin/destination or wether it is my environment that effects my thoughts. Since I have been working in London I have soon found out it is most definitely the later. In London I find my morning commute consists solely of tedious monotony and I need to salvage myself in the confines of a book to deter from depression. In that sense then, Victoria Park is almost a refugee that allows me the freedom of thought and provides me an almost meditative state that saves me from getting to worked up over issues that don’t really need to be worried about. Open space can really promote an open mind.