The unexamined life is not worth loving – I don’t know why that rephrasing of Socrates came to me  while I was out on a hike this afternoon, but it seemed to get itself lodged in there so much that it was all I thought about for the time I was out there. For a long time, I had stopped taking walks on the hills; lately, however, I’ve been going back out with a recorder in my pocket, talking as I go and writing down whatever spills out later – which is what I’m doing now and I hope goes in some way to explain the rambling nature of this entry.

The rhythm of the walk pushes aside the part of me that’s trying to be clever and lets a quieter, deeper voice step forward. I’m only now realising that “clear your mind” doesn’t mean to empty it out. It means getting the clutter out of the way so the mind can speak more clearly.

I’ve been told enough times and by enough people to believe it that I overthink things. I try to find the root cause of everything, as if the world and experience are puzzles to be solved. At work, that habit probably helps, but in life, it mostly leaves me frustrated and without answers. I can articulate an issue and a solution, but genuine communication – getting on the same page with someone else – remains a difficulty.

It’s been said by individuals far smarter than myself that there are two types of people; the kind that observes and the kind that builds systems. Some of us begin from the outside and build an inner model; some of us start with a model within and read the world through it. I suspect I might be a system-builder by temperament. In some ways it’s a useful way to think, but only up to a point.

Part of the problem is that words sit in a strange place – at least for me. On the one hand ‘talk is cheap’ and ‘actions speak louder than words’; on the other, we are told to speak no ill of the dead and that what we say matters. They’re both disposable and vital. I’ve known people who have said brutal things and proved themselves to be outstanding when it counted, and I’ve known polite people who’ve been full of charm while robbing me.

A lot of knowing doesn’t involve language at all. The writer Vladimir Nabokov said something in an interview that I think about often enough to believe it must resonate with me. It was something like, ‘I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.’  The quietest person in the room sometimes understands what others miss, and perhaps goes in some way to explain why great athletes can perform flawlessly but then fail to explain how. That deep, non-verbal understanding can’t be conveyed in speech.

Spinoza made a similar point with the image of a stone flying through the air; if the stone were conscious, it would believe it chose its trajectory. We’re not stones, but our stories often run behind the motion, rationalizing what has already happened. Words are the narration after the fact. If someone fires off a cruel remark in anger, but then turns up week after week when they’re needed, then repeated action tells you who they are more reliably than the insult.

My walk ended abruptly when the rain began and I had to make for home – the weather itself mattering more than anything I could say about it. That was part of the lesson. Examination isn’t about trying to find the right expression for what is happening, it’s about something taking place deeper inside. Description is not understanding. To understand is to integrate something until it changes how you move through a day. It changes what you notice and what you choose. Once you can grasp something like that, it’s beyond words.

Or maybe it was all just my mind playing word games with itself.  But if so,  even that is worth examining – and perhaps loving.