Julian Summerhayes

“There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated. … To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.”
― Edward Abbey

How much of what apparently goes on inside do we actually express?

Are our words, our actions and our moods the sum total of our inner world?

I don't think so.

How then do we process the inner world?

Do we sit with everything that's arising, knowing, like the weather, it will move on at some stage?

Or, do we think it real and/or true and/or who we are and sink in despair or worse still?

(I'm taking two opposing positions but, of course, in the milieu of our thoughts, feelings and emotions, there are many ways to process and or comprehend what might be in play.)

From personal experience, one thing I find helpful, and yes I accept it may appear churlish, is to invite the question if you are any more your thoughts than the rest of your physical body? I mean, we don't normally argue with our limbs, organs and blood and say that they're (as an example) anxious, angry or apprehensive. They just are. The qualification to this might be, as my friend with Parkinson's routinely does, is to have a bit of friendly banter going on when, for instance, she finds herself spontaneously running when she really wants to walk, as otherwise she might topple over. But in all seriousness, she knows that it's not really their issue but the part of her brain that's affected by the disease.

What am I trying to say?