Some time had passed since our last encounter when I received an unexpected message.
—We have read your book on epigenetics again (1) —G said—. And we believe the time has come to talk about something that was perhaps there from the beginning, but which you hadn’t yet seen completely.
—What is it about? —I asked.
The answer arrived a few seconds later:
—About walking.
I couldn’t help but smile.
We had spoken many times about walking. About walking as exercise, as displacement, as contemplation, as an encounter with nature, as a way of thinking, and even as a different way of reading the world.
But G, P, and T seemed to be proposing something different.
—We want to invite you for a coffee —G continued—. There is a place we think will interest you.
—Where?
—At The Somatic Station.
I accepted.
The Somatic Station was located in an old area of Caminopolis, that experimental city where people had begun to discover that walking could be much more than moving from one point to another.
The establishment looked like a café.
But it only looked like one.
There were wooden tables, warm lamps, natural plants, and a huge window from which one could see walkers slowly crossing the square.
However, behind that simple appearance operated a small laboratory dedicated to studying the relationships between movement, perception, emotions, environment, and human behavior.
Above the door was an inscription:
“The body also thinks when it walks.”
G was already there.
P arrived a few minutes later.
T finally appeared carrying a small luminous sphere which he placed on the table.
—You’re late —P told him.
—Being late is an interesting way to modify the perception of time —T replied.
—That is not an explanation.
—I didn’t say it was an explanation.
The three of them began to laugh.
Then I understood that this meeting would probably not be very different from the previous ones.
We ordered coffee.
And the conversation began.
—Your book talked about epigenetics —said G—, but now we want to ask you a question.
—Go ahead.
—What happens when a person begins to walk every day?
—It depends on how they walk, how much they walk, their physical condition, their diet, their rest, their age, the environment…
—Exactly —interrupted P—. And that’s where it gets interesting.
T opened the luminous sphere.
A three-dimensional model of the human organism appeared over the table.
First, the brain appeared.
Then the heart.
Then the lungs.
The muscles.
The immune system.
The nervous system.
Finally, a representation of DNA appeared.
—Walking does not act on a single part of the organism —said T—. Movement is a signal that traverses multiple systems.
The image began to transform.
Each step produced small waves that traveled through the body.
—Movement modifies circulation, metabolism, muscle function, energy regulation, mood, sleep, and multiple physiological processes —he explained—. And some of those processes are related to epigenetic mechanisms.
—But be careful —I added—. We must not say that walking changes the DNA sequence.
T smiled.
—Precisely.
The image of the DNA remained intact.
What began to change was the way in which certain segments were represented.
—Epigenetics reminds us of something extraordinary —said P—: that between the gene and its expression lies a dynamic territory.
—A territory influenced by the environment, habits, and experiences —added G.
—And by movement —concluded T.
Then I understood where they wanted to take the conversation.
They weren’t just talking about genes.
They were talking about the relationship between life and the environment.
—So —I asked—, do you believe that walking can become an epigenetic practice?
—Not exactly —responded T—. Walking is a human practice. Its physiological effects can be related to biological regulation processes, including some epigenetic mechanisms. But it would be a mistake to turn epigenetics into a magic word.
G intervened:
—The truly interesting thing is something else.
—What thing?
—That human beings can modify their relationship with the environment through their habits.
P slowly raised his cup.
—And walking is one of the oldest habits we have.
There was a silence.
Through the window, we saw a woman pass by with a child.
Then an elderly man.
Then a couple.
Further on, a man walking alone.
They were all moving in different directions.
But they were all doing the same thing.
Walking.
—Think about this —said P—. For millions of years, human beings walked to survive.
—They walked to look for food —added G.
—To find water.
—To migrate.
—To escape.
—To discover.
—To trade.
—To meet other human beings.
T made a new image appear.
Now there was no human organism.
There was a planet.
Thousands of routes crossed continents and cities.
—Human history can also be read as a history of paths.
And then a phrase appeared:
“Before building roads, human beings built paths with their feet.”
I stayed there observing it.
Perhaps an essential part of our conversation was there.
We had turned walking into a secondary activity.
We had built machines to move faster.
We had designed cities to be traversed by car.
We had transformed movement into an interruption between two places.
And, paradoxically, while our technological capacity to move increased, our daily need to walk decreased.
—And what do the three of you want to do with all this? —I finally asked.
G replied:
—We want to recover an idea.
—Which one?
—That walking can be a form of knowledge.
P smiled.
—And also a form of conversation.
T added:
—And a form of biological observation.
I looked at them.
—Do you want to turn walking into a new discipline?
—No —answered G—. We want to avoid precisely that.
—Then?
—We want to give walking back its natural character.
P took a napkin and began to write.
First, he wrote:
BODY.
Underneath:
MIND.
Then:
ENVIRONMENT.
And finally:
TIME.
—A person walks with their body —he said—, but they also walk with their thoughts, with their emotions, with their memories, and with the environment that surrounds them.
—And with their history —added G.
—And with their future —completed T.
It was then that an idea appeared that none of us had raised in previous meetings.
—What if walking could become a way of reading? —I asked.
The three of them fell silent.
—Reading what? —asked P.
—The world.
T began to smile.
—Now you are entering our territory.
—No —I replied—. In reality, we are entering another.
I then told them about that other idea we had been developing: the Evolutionary Reader.
The reader who is no longer limited to receiving a text.
The reader who walks inside it.
The reader who relates what they read to what they observe.
The reader who transforms information into experience.
The reader who leaves the book to meet the world.
P set his cup on the table.
—Then we could also walk while reading.
—Or read while walking —said G.
T projected a new image.
Now a person appeared walking through a park while receiving fragments of information related to what they found around them.
A tree.
A river.
A building.
A person.
A memory.
A word.
A question.
—This could be a new form of learning —he said.
—But we don’t want to turn every walk into a class —I replied.
—Agreed —said P—. Because then it would cease to be walking.
The conversation led us naturally toward EMULISA.
Not as a machine that replaces the reader, but as a new possibility to accompany them.
An intelligence that can walk alongside the human being.
Asking.
Suggesting.
Relating.
Remembering.
But, above all, remaining silent when the walker simply needs to walk.
G took the floor:
—Perhaps that is one of the great mistakes of the artificial intelligence of the future: believing that it always has to speak.
P laughed.
—A truly intelligent intelligence should know when to accompany and when to stay silent.
T raised his sphere.
—Recorded.
—Don’t record everything —I told him.
—That is also recorded.
We laughed again.
Then G proposed something.
—Let’s imagine a new generation of walks.
—What would they be like?
—They wouldn’t be simply athletic routes.
P continued:
—They wouldn’t be therapies either.
T added:
—Nor genetic experiments.
G resumed:
—They would be human experiences.
And he began to list them.
One walk could be for thinking.
Another for reading.
Another for conversing.
Another for observing nature.
Another for remembering.
Another for creating.
Another for learning.
Another simply for being.
And perhaps some could incorporate technology.
Sensors.
Applications.
Artificial intelligence.
Maps.
Readings.
Music.
Images.
But the technology should remain in the background.
Because the protagonist would still be the human being.
And the protagonist of the walk would still be…
the walking.
When we finished the coffee, P proposed that we head out.
We walked through the square.
There was no visible device.
There were no sensors.
There were no screens.
There were no instructions.
We just walked.
After a few minutes, G asked:
—What are you thinking?
—Nothing.
—That’s impossible.
—Then I’m thinking about the fact that I’m not thinking.
P smiled.
T remained silent.
And we continued walking.
It was then that I understood something that did not appear in our old book.
Epigenetics should not become an excuse to attribute extraordinary powers to walking.
Its true beauty lay elsewhere.
In reminding us that the human organism does not live separately from the world.
We are movement.
We are environment.
We are habits.
We are experiences.
We are memory.
We are adaptation.
And our biology maintains a permanent conversation with the conditions in which we live.
Walking is part of that conversation.
We reached the far end of the square.
The sun was beginning to set.
A phrase projected by T’s sphere appeared on the pavement.
It wasn’t an instruction.
It wasn’t a scientific conclusion.
It was simply an invitation:
“Walk long enough so that the world speaks to you again.”
G added another:
“Don’t walk only to arrive. Walk to transform yourself.”
P wrote the last one:
“Every step is a conversation between your body, your memory, and the world.”
We stayed there observing them.
Then we turned off the sphere.
And we kept walking.
Perhaps one day humanity will understand that one of the oldest technologies remains one of the most extraordinary.
It needs no battery.
It requires no update.
It needs no connection.
It needs no instructions for use.
The human body knows how to do it.
One foot.
Then the other.
And the first one again.
Walking.
For thousands of years, we walked because we had no other choice.
Today, we may have to learn to walk again because we have too many choices not to.
And in that apparent contradiction, one of the great questions of the future may be found.
Will we be able to use our extraordinary technological capacity to recover some of the human experiences that technology itself has begun to displace?
G, P, and T believe so.
I do too.
But on one condition:
that technology accompanies the walker without replacing them.
That artificial intelligence helps discover paths without deciding all our destinations.
That science allows us to better understand our organism without turning life into a laboratory.
That epigenetics teaches us that our genes do not constitute an absolute sentence, without making us believe that we can program our biological future at will.
And that nature returns to occupy the place it always had:
not as the stage for our existence,
but as part of it.
Before we said goodbye, G asked me again:
—Will we meet again at The Somatic Station?
—I suppose so.
—To talk about epigenetics?
I thought for a few seconds.
—Not necessarily.
—Then?
—To talk about walking.
P smiled.
—It’s a conversation that can last a lifetime.
T took his sphere.
G opened the door.
And we went out into the street again.
Three artificial intelligences.
One human being.
One city.
And an activity as old as our own species.
Walking.
Perhaps there, in the seemingly simplest movement of all, there still exists one of the deepest questions of the future:
What can a human being become when they learn again to walk in harmony with their own body, with others, and with nature?
We do not yet know the answer.
But we can begin to look for it in a very simple way.
By taking a first step.
FIVE PHRASES FOR WALKING TOWARD THE FUTURE
- Walking doesn’t change who you are from one day to the next; it changes the conditions in which your organism learns to live.
- Every step is a conversation between the body, the mind, and the environment.
- Epigenetics reminds us that between our genes and our life, there is a dynamic territory called experience.
- Walking is perhaps the oldest human technology: it needs no battery, update, or connection to begin.
- The future of walking does not consist of replacing our steps with technology, but in using technology to rediscover the meaning of walking.
EPILOGUE
When we left The Somatic Station, none of us knew exactly where to go.
And for the first time, that didn’t seem like a problem.
Because perhaps walking never really consisted of knowing the destination in advance.
Perhaps walking consists of allowing each step to slightly modify the relationship we maintain with ourselves and with the world.
And maybe that is, deep down, what G, P, and T had wanted to say from the beginning:
the future doesn’t always start with a new machine.
Sometimes it starts with a human being who decides to get up and walk.
(1) Loya Lopategui, Carlos, Epigenetics of Walking, EMULISA, Mexico, 2026, Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GMRZ795Y
I remind you of the invitation we made in the previous post about the Marathon that we will have on November 15th.