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Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
I started walking backward for no apparent reason. It wasn’t meant to be a metaphorical act or anything profound. I was simply waving goodbye to my daughters through the snowy window of the school bus when it occurred to me to take a few steps backward as they finally drove off. But since I’d already started – and being a professional oddball – I thought it might be a good idea to walk all the way home that way, just a couple of blocks. After all, the irony of moving forward by going backward seemed worth exploring.
The first complication, of course, was practical. Snow is a pain even for regular walking, so my pace slowed down considerably. At this different rhythm, life itself felt rushed in comparison. It struck me how silly it is that we’re always in such a hurry to get somewhere. For example, I often arrive at places long after my body gets there. What I mean is that sometimes I reach my daughters’ school, but my mind is still at home, going over whether I turned off the stove or unplugged my wife’s hair dryer. Walking backward, however, forced me to reconcile the pace of my body and my mind.
The next thing had to do with vision. In regular walking, the path ahead is always visible. Here, the path becomes peripheral. Sure, you have to pay attention to where you’re going or you’ll end up testing the resilience of a lamppost, but you use other senses: you hear the car approaching, you sense the unevenness of the ground, you notice the change in the firmness of the snow, you gauge the height of a step. You activate an entire set of skills we usually keep dormant because of our dependence on sight, which we let do all the work, so to speak. This way, the familiar path I walked every day suddenly felt like a grand adventure, a discovery I hadn’t anticipated.
Because of my addiction to foolish ideas, as I mentioned earlier, I decided to continue my backward walking experiment for the rest of the day. So, mid-morning, I headed to the convenience store, walking in reverse.
I quickly realized something obvious: the path I enjoyed most was the one I had already travelled. And it struck me that this was the right way to look at life: moving toward a destination without ever forgetting where you’ve been, the obstacles you’ve overcome, or how far you’ve come. I’ve never been particularly nostalgic and have treated the past more like a cemetery I visit when I feel sentimental than a shrine I worship daily. But looking back is always good for self-esteem. There’s no way to look at yesterday and not feel better: for the illness that didn’t kill you, the girl who never called but you’ve since forgotten, the death of your father that you thought you’d never get through, or the happy childhood days that still make you smile.
People walking forward – who never seem to notice anything – started looking at me strangely. At first, I thought it was curiosity. But after observing many of their expressions, I concluded it might have been envy. For some reason, we tend to believe that the fleeting moments worth living for are preserved forever in the past. So advancing while looking backward must have triggered some kind of personal crisis in them.
But because I’m an insecure person who needs to justify all his actions, I decided to search the internet for evidence that backward walking might be beneficial. There wasn’t much material, I must admit. A study published in the Journal of Biomechanics attributed benefits like relieving knee pressure to retro-walking, as the experts call it. (Which makes me wonder: how odd must it be to go through life calling yourself an expert in walking backward?)
Lower back pain relief. Improved memory and perception. Strengthened muscles. The list of benefits was varied enough that I built my case and prepared my response for when my family inevitably questioned why I had to be so weird.
Once I had my argument ready, I went to pick up my daughters from the bus stop where this had all begun. Mía and Ame, aged 8 and 6 respectively, are not fans of jokes. So it didn’t take long for them to question why I was walking backward. Just as I was about to launch into my well-rehearsed explanation, Mía cut me off in Spanish, our first language: “Pa, grow up.”
The kid doesn’t mess around. So it’s best not to give her any reason to get annoyed. Because, as you know, in this generation, it’s the parents who fear their children. That’s why my professional career as a retro-walker lasted only a few hours, and the rush of life hasn’t left me time to pick it up again.
That said, since I always like going against the grain, I wrote this column starting with the last paragraph. Or at least, I gave it a shot.
Andersson Boscán lives in Mississauga, Ont.
