This time it is a Sunday. At this park, Jefferson Market in New York. This time it is with my daughter and son in-law. This time it is into flowers, a bench for contemplation. This time it is a plaque to read of this garden’s history as a detention center and courthouse. Things change. I love the wander. I love drifting to the feeling of what a place is and was. I love the meander. For all the imagination that it opens in me and connective tissue that it animates.
When wander isn’t just a meander, like it was Sunday at Jefferson Market, wander is also a very deliberate learning strategy when I work with groups. It’s invitation to look not just at the goal and the objective, but also to look and soften to a periphery. Psychologists, educators, and spiritual teachers have been telling us for years that there is such value in the oblique. My particular spin is that anything we see on the outer creates invitation to explore what is on the inner. From there, clarity and learning reforms and refreshes the outer. I walk in the park changes not just what we see, but changes who we are. Or as Poet David Whyte shares, “…sometimes the truth depends on a walk around the lake….”
So, on this Sunday, it is hydrangeas, hostas, lillies, yarrow — and so much more — that brings my heart alive with wander. That brings incessant delight.
