LIGHTNESS

…weighing dialectics…

…so, when I packed a suitcase years ago, I thought mostly about everything I might need.

Extra books. Matches sealed in an airtight container. Crampons. Rope. Tools for adventures that were often imagined rather than real.

The heft of packs and duffel bags somehow reassured me. Weight suggested preparedness.

I often think of a scuba diver I once saw emerging from the sea at a public beach in Nettuno, near Rome. He wore a full wetsuit weighted with lead, a large dagger strapped to his calf, and a harpoon gun slung over his shoulder. Amid a beach full of Speedos and bikinis, he looked as though he had stepped directly out of a Jacques Cousteau documentary.

At the time, it seemed faintly ridiculous.

And yet I admired him.

There was something appealing about the completeness of his outfitting.

In that period of my life, I was drawn to comprehensiveness. Every journey felt like an expedition. I packed as though I were Mallory setting out for Everest without porters or Wordsworth crossing the Lake District in damp wool and hobnailed boots.

The weight felt meaningful.

That attraction to weight extended beyond travel.

I liked substantial objects. Heavy brass. Thick leather. Silver with a reassuring density. I was drawn to ornate art and elaborate craftsmanship. More seemed better. Heft implied consequence. Weight suggested permanence.

Perhaps, unconsciously, it also pushed back against mortality.

Yet over the past decade, as I have become increasingly aware of life’s finitude, I have found myself moving in the opposite direction.

Toward the elemental.

Toward the light.

Toward things pared down to their essence.

The weight of possessions, ideas, and ornament began to feel less like preparation and more like obscuration. It became harder to see what mattered beneath all the accumulation.

The Baroque chapel no longer held me captive. Bernini became too much. The embellishments of haute couture seemed performative. The alchemy of molecular gastronomy felt forced.

Beauty remained.

But essence was harder to find.

Increasingly, I find myself drawn not toward transcendence of our humanity but toward a deeper inhabiting of it.

Many of us spend our lives attempting to rise above our nature, as though our evolutionary inheritance were something embarrassing to overcome. Yet I have become more interested in leaning into it.

Our bodies and minds evolved in motion, in landscapes rather than rooms, in relationship with weather, seasons, animals, and other people. We were shaped by long walks, uncertainty, observation, and attention.

Modern life—and especially technology—moves us further from those conditions.

Perhaps that is why there remains a persistent, almost atavistic longing to reconnect with the earth beneath our feet, to move more lightly across it, and to rediscover the rhythms that shaped us.

Even the debate between intuition and reason reflects this tension. Daniel Kahneman famously argued that our instincts often mislead us. Yet thinkers such as Gerd Gigerenzer suggest that human beings possess an “ecological rationality”—forms of wisdom shaped by environments and experience that often outperform elaborate calculations.

I increasingly suspect that both are right.

But I also suspect we have forgotten how much intelligence is carried in the body.

So how am I trying to cultivate lightness?

• cooking simple meals from fresh vegetables

• planting seeds

• listening to birdsong and wind in the morning

• walking barefoot

• wearing lighter clothing

• stepping into cold wild water

• holding ideas more lightly

• traveling without too much purpose

• speaking more calmly

• thinking in decades rather than days

• sitting in silence

• drinking tea slowly

• allowing space for idleness

• drawing and writing every day

These are not rules.

They are reminders.

Small physical and mental prompts that help me move toward a different way of living and thinking.

And yet, despite this growing affection for lightness, I remain nostalgic for certain forms of weight. Victorian plumbing still delights me. So does a heavily sauced French dish served on a cold evening.

The dialectic remains unresolved.

Perhaps it always will.

For now, though, I will continue my pursuit of lightness—hoping to leave gentler footprints, lighter baggage, and fewer certainties behind me.

Keep well and travel light….