an explanation

I typically do this when I create a new blog...explain the title, briefly.


One time I changed the name of a blog two or three times before feeling satisfied with the outcome.

This blog is different, this one I sort of knew all along I would name after my sort-of adopted Latin motto.

Solvitur ambulando became the thing I started to think and say to myself my first summer living in Boston and working at the Symphony. It was a lonely and confusing time, those first couple of post-collegiate years where everyone is suddenly off doing their own thing and your millennial-generation friends are just as hard to pin down as you are. Throw in a difficult new job, a relationship break-up, and the news that old school mates had met untimely ends, and well, you get a pretty hard couple of months.

All of the anxiety and reckoning, for me, translated into a restlessness. I felt a constant need to be doing something other than the task at hand, that everything I was in process of working on was pointless, and that no one could understand. Even when I spent time talking to family, friends, and clergy, I had this deep pit of despair feeling that they didn't really know it was all going to be okay, and that I had to simply keep searching for a way to find that it would be okay for myself.


One Saturday morning I got invited to brunch in Cambridge by an old friend I hadn't seen in a while. By that point, it was getting difficult for me to get out of the house for anything other than work and rehearsals, I was just too sad and overwhelmed by all of the options in life to really plan anything. Brunch got me fired up, and I took off to meet a group. After brunch, sadly, everyone split off in different directions to study (med students, the worst), and I just couldn't go home. I was out, I was in the world, and my restlessness finally extended from my heart (and probably high-blood pressure system) into my feet.

Though I've lived in the Boston area for almost the entirety of my life, I've never truly explored it by foot. That day, I walked from Mass Ave in Central Square across the river, down along the Esplanade, over the park, and all the way to the Wharf and the North End. I ended up calling a friend who lived over there and stopping by to say hello and take a little break before walking back across the city. Her parents came by soon thereafter, for they had big family plans of an early dinner and dessert.

My friend told me later that her father, who has known me since I was 13 and who has worked in the field of psychology for many years, was worried about me. He felt that I was going through so much pain, and was unable to feel it or see it head-on, and that instead my endless walking through the city was my way of expressing the pain and in a way, choosing to feel physical exhaustion as a more tangible kind of "pain".

Yeah, so he was totally right.

What he didn't call that day was that this need to walk would stay with me, and would turn into something where I find solace and fuel. Inspiration, sorting of confusion, and formulation of thoughts and ideas. This walking has turned into my way of solving things, thus the eventual settling of the motto upon my heart, for that is the literal translation of solvitur ambulando, to solve by walking. 

I'v noticed in the last few months that on days where I could walk down Mass Ave to the office, I would arrive fully focused and ready to be efficient and tackle any issue without hesitation. During my walk one morning, I made three phone calls and had setup the entire memorial service for my friend, after hearing the news that it wouldn't be possible to revive her in the aftermath of a serious snowboarding accident. During a walk later that week, I drafted a travel grant research proposal in my mind for a Wellesley alumnae grant that I can apply for next year (still yet to be fully written down).

Some days I would arrive at work and get a few mornings tasks out of the way, and then explode a poem onto a word document in a matter of minutes. I actually like some of the things I've written.

Other mornings I would wake up with leftover anxiety and hurt. It would be claustrophobic to ride the 1 bus, and I would get off at MIT in order to walk across the bridge and give myself the few quiet moments I needed. I don't go searching for ideas or thoughts. It's maybe the closest thing I do to meditation --- focus on the walking, on the footfalls, on the being here in the now, and sometimes other ideas pop up. Conflicts sorted themselves out. Long, would-be emotional explanations or conversations I imagine with people where there are things left still unresolved are simplified. The options are handed to me with simple yes and no questions, the kind I like best. Especially in the morning.

So, I'm sticking with solvitur ambulando for this blog, which will probably see me through not just this month of travel, but all the way through the summer months depending on how things unfold. The nice thing is, I'm not entirely sure what I am looking to solve with my wandering, but somehow, my feet always seem to lead me exactly where I need to be.

-lab