Wandern

"Wandern" is the German word for "hiking", but when I hear it I can't help but think of wandering. Well, depending on who you go with with hiking really is a lot like wandering.

I like the idea of wandering thou. It reminds me of the wonder that surrounds me. I'd prefer to wander through my ideas, books and papers instead of getting directly to the point right away. At least in those cases where I have time my prefered method is to read a paper and stop at some point, even after the first sentence, and begin to daydream about what I just read. Then I'm off! Wandern! It's usually at these times that I come across the most exciting conclusions and connections to other things I have read.

The idea of wandering though life also fascinates me. I remember reading "Memoirs of a Geisha" (on the very trustworthy recommendation from Oprah). In in the protagonist talks about her water sign and how her life is a reflection of a path of water flowing through a river, it's path bending and guided by the many features surrounding it, constantly changing, moving. In a sense the water just flows, it flows because it flows, always travelling, moving, wanderning through the river. In Buddhism the River comes up when talking about emptiness and impermanence. What is the river? can you touch the river? By the time you see the river and think about it, it is gone. There is no river, it is constantly changing. This is a starting point for a reflection of ourselves. We are the river, constantly changing and moving, there is no real thing that is the person. You can't grab it and call it a person, and in that sense we are rivers and we are wandering. Thorugh forests, life and ideas.

It is also an apt description of evolutionary direction. There is no direction to speak of (although there are, of course, constraints). Mutations act at random, drift acts at random. The collective influence of stochiastic events is incredible. And so it is not just the individual that wanders but it is indeed a reflection of all of nature.