I can’t run right now – or what, for me, passes for running. I must walk, and I hate it. A tear in my right calf muscle has exposed me as a walking cliche of middle-class, middle-aged life: I overcompensate for a deskbound existence through bursts of physical exercise, but now with painful results.

This 43-year-old body isn’t what she used to be.

While I make a reluctant novice, the spiritual worth of walking is dawning on me – slowly, obviously. The saying goes, “walk before you run”, or, master the basics before you level up. But in a world obsessed with speed, running might be less an ideal and more the conformist choice.

Wisdom might instead back the slower pace that walking, as opposed to running, embodies – especially if we want to remain human in a world that can feel anything but.

I know I’m not alone in feeling swamped every bloody day, and that I must run at everything to keep up. I’m all for running for the love of it – actual running, and the kind where you throw yourself into something with gusto. But when running feels forced on us, becoming the default mode to tackle life, then I have a problem.

My need to hurry, then, is partly why I have an issue with walking.........

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