The smartwatch and the art of walking

In this period the question I hear most often is: “Do you really go there on foot?”. Yesterday it happened to me again. I had to go to an old bookshop in the center of Rome to moderate a conference on the environment and the Constitution: a little more than four kilometers from home. I set the route on Google Maps as I always do and I saw that it would have taken me 30 minutes on a moped, 40 minutes on the metro, 45 minutes walking. I had no doubts: I chose to walk. I’ve been doing it since I found out it’s really good for health. That is, it has always been said: but the smartwatch that measures the movement I make every day, reiterates it to me every moment. Yesterday’s walk was worth six hundred calories, round trip, like a session in the gym or a game of tennis. And then you want to put: during that journey with your smartphone, you can listen to music, or your favorite podcast, or take off all those pending work calls (some do it on the subway, letting everyone hear their own business, never mind). Or even better: during those walks you can think: walking is said to increase creativity. Or even just discovering a shop in your neighborhood that you knew nothing about. The beneficial power of a walk is an ancient story: without disturbing the mystical paths such as that of Santiago or the Via Francigena, or the walks we take on vacation, walking when you can is a lifestyle choice. Doctors say you’re not really old until you can walk because of the effects that coordinated movement has on the brain. But it can also be the beginning of a collective revolution: a great sage said, be the change you want to see in the world. Here, I would like to see a world largely freed from cars, with cleaner air and streets populated by people who defy laziness to feel better and maybe get to know each other.

I’ve been doing it for a while and I’m doing great.