The Bridge Taught Me the Difference Between Moving and Going
Anybody can move all day and never go anywhere. I learned the difference one Saturday morning.
A walk only changes you when you're actually there for it. The steps are real, the miles are real, my health is better for all of it. But the part that changed me isn't the part that shows up on the watch. It's whether I was present for the walk or just got it done.
Being here instead of just nearby. That's the whole thing.
I like walking the bridge early because it's quiet. Saturday morning, before the day has decided what it wants out of me. I'm out there getting my steps in, same as a lot of mornings, and lately the thing I keep noticing is the other people.
You pass somebody and they say hi. And I mean they actually look at you, they nod, they mean it. Hi. Then a little further up, somebody else does the same thing. Good morning. It keeps happening until you realize you're not making it up.
The people out walking on a Saturday morning, for no reason except to walk, are in a good mood. Almost all of them. Really good moods, honestly. You can see it before they even get close. No rush in the shoulders. They're out there on purpose, light, in it, and it shows up in the whole body. They didn't have to come. They wanted to.
And then there's the other kind. You can tell pretty quick. The dog dragged somebody out, phone in one hand, leash in the other, eyes already somewhere else. Somebody else is head down, already three hours into a day that has not technically started yet.
And here's the one I know best. The person walking because they're supposed to. Doctor said so. Watch said so. They told themselves last night they would. And you can see it on them. The dread is right there in the walk. They're getting it over with. Body present, the rest of them resenting being there at all, watching the step count tick up like a sentence they have to serve before they're allowed to quit. Same sidewalk, same morning, same air. But they're not here. They're just nearby.
It stuck with me. Why the people who chose to be out there were lighter than the people who had to be out there. Same exact activity. Whole different person doing it. One of them present, the other one just passing through.
I'm not telling you this from up on some hill, like I'm one of the good-mood people and you should go be like us. Most mornings, left to how I actually feel, I'm the other one. I'm the guy serving the sentence. I know exactly what that walk feels like from the inside, because that's the one my body wants to take. The one where you're counting. Already done before you started.
Here's a thing I keep coming back to on these walks. It sounds simple until you sit with it. A walk isn't steps. It's steps that are going somewhere.
Going, not just moving.
Anybody can move. You can move all day and never actually go anywhere, in the way that counts. The dog gets walked, the errand gets run, the body covers some ground. That's moving. Going is when you're actually in it, headed somewhere on purpose, awake to the fact that you're the one out there doing it. And that's the same exact difference as being here instead of just nearby.
I know this because my body made me learn it. Twice, in 2015 and again in 2020, I got sat down hard and told I'd been moving through my own life without really being in it. Two heart attacks, five years apart, both saying the same thing in a language I couldn't argue with. You'd think that'd fix it for good. It doesn't. The lesson fades. The hurry comes back. And one ordinary Saturday on a bridge it shows back up as that same quiet question, whether I'm here or just nearby.
So let me be honest about how I actually hold onto this, because it isn't willpower and it isn't memory. I'm terrible at remembering to be present. And even when I remember fine, plenty of mornings I still don't want to go. The bed is warm, the day is loud, and everything in me would rather get the steps over with later, half there, counting.
So what I did instead was build my day so the walk catches me whether I feel like it or not. I don't negotiate with myself about it. I just step into it and go. I stopped trusting myself to choose it in the moment, and I rigged the moment so the choice is mostly already made. Two heart attacks made the cost of forgetting real clear, so I stopped leaving it up to how I feel.
But getting out the door is only half of it. I can walk out resenting it, same as anybody. The thing that flips the reluctant walk into the other kind isn't a better mood and it isn't more discipline. It's smaller than that, and I can do it on the worst morning. I decide to actually be in it. That's all.
Same shoes, same bridge, same body that didn't want to come. I quit counting down the steps and start noticing I'm on the bridge at all, and the exact same walk becomes a different thing under my feet. I've felt it switch mid-walk. Started out serving the sentence. Ended up out there on purpose. Nothing changed except whether I was present for it.
And once I'm in it, the walk does something I can't get any other way. When you slow down to the speed of your own two feet, something opens up. You start noticing. A hawk sitting up in a tree. The way the light hits the water. The person saying good morning who actually wants you to have a good morning. You can't catch any of that going sixty in a car. You can barely catch it going fast on foot. I think that's part of why it works on me the same way prayer does. Slow and quiet, both of them getting me to the same still place from two different directions.
Because being somewhere is not the same as being there. I can get my 12,500 steps in, the way I do, spread out in little bursts across the whole day, and still spend the whole time somewhere else. Running the week in my head. Already arguing with a problem that hasn't even happened yet. My feet are moving, but I'm not on the bridge. I'm everywhere except where I actually am. That's the reluctant walk again, the one nobody made me take but me.
And the wild part is, the day looks identical either way. Nobody can tell from the outside whether you were present or just passing through. The steps count the same on the watch. The miles are the miles. The difference doesn't show up in the numbers. It shows up in you. In whether you came back lighter, or just came back done with it.
That's why those Saturday-morning people are in good moods. It's not magic, and it's not that they're better than the rest of us. They decided to actually be there for it. They're not getting it over with. They're in it. And on the mornings I make that same small decision, I get to be one of them. Same bridge. Same guy who didn't want to come.
So here's the small thing, if you want it. You don't need a bridge and you don't need a sunrise. Sometime today you're going to move from one place to another. Walking to the car, down a hallway, around the block, to the mailbox and back. Normally that's dead time, the stretch you spend in your head somewhere else, getting it over with.
Take one of those stretches. Just one. And actually be in it. Notice the air. Notice what you pass. Say good morning to somebody and mean it.
That's it. That's the whole practice. One stretch of moving where you're all the way there instead of just nearby. It won't fix your week. But it'll hand you back a few minutes of your own life.
Henry David Thoreau said something a long time ago about how the cost of a thing is the amount of life you spend on it. And about living in the present and letting the past go. I read that and the note I wrote myself was four words. This is why I walk. To be here, not back there.
There's an old idea, older than Thoreau, that to walk somewhere and to live your life were the same word. You walk with God by being present with him, step after ordinary step. I didn't learn that on the bridge. But the bridge is where I keep relearning it, one Saturday at a time.
I think that's what those people figured out before I did. They're not walking to get somewhere. They're already here.