Last night the temperature dipped a little below 20 degrees and my wife and I bundled up and went for a walk. We walked past houses still decorated with holiday finery and talked about art and dreams. We stepped over ice patches and around snow mounds and crunched around our neighborhood for about an hour before slowly wending our way home. The walk was wonderful and allowed us to reconnect on several levels.

The walk and the resultant feelings reminded of an old saying that states that any time you move faster than an ox cart you leave your soul behind. The argument being that each time we drive or hop on a plane, the disorientation we feel is our soul trying to catch up to us. Now I am not a spiritual guy, but I suspect there is some root truth to this.

I would also argue that out-of-scale consumption does the same thing. If you consume beyond your means or beyond a reasonable, sustainable level, you feel it in a similar manner. Maybe it is only momentary and just a flush, but as you speed through personal or global resources too fast something might be letting you know.

Current culture and the sheer velocity of society do not allow for these deep-seated emotions. But what if we embraced them? What if we went for walks in the evening rather than zip around the electronic universe of television? What if we sat on our front porch equivalent and waited for our souls to catch up rather than shopping on-line and getting more disconnected from ourselves and those around us? Could be worth a try.