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For years, I have written about walking.

I have done so from everyday experience, from intuition, and from the slow observation of the body and the world as we advance step by step. Along that journey—which has been not only physical but intellectual—I began to formulate an idea that I called HOMO-ITER some years ago: the walking man of the future.

In those posts, written around 2020 (HOMO-ITER: MAN-WALKER. PART I; and HOMO-ITER: MAN-WALKER. PART II), I proposed that the human being of tomorrow would not be the fastest, nor the most technological, nor the most sedentarily “efficient,” but rather the one who recovered walking as the axis of their biological, cognitive and ethical life. I didn’t know it clearly then, but that idea wasn’t just a metaphor: it was an evolutionary intuition.

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Today, after a long process of observation, measurement, systematization and reflection, that intuition has taken shape as a conceptual and scientific model: HOMETOITER (1).

From the intuitive HOMO-ITER to the HOMETOITER Scientific Model

HOMETOITER is a concept that integrates three inseparable dimensions:

• HOMEO → balance, regulation, homeostasis
• ETO → conduct, repetition, vital stability, ethology
• ITER → walking, moving, traversing the world

The model proposes a very clear central hypothesis:

Walking is not an optional activity or a prescribed exercise, but a basal vital function that regulates the biological, behavioral, and cognitive balance of the human being.

This hypothesis does not emerge from a laboratory, but from something much closer and, paradoxically, much more forgotten: the observation of the dog.

Why the dog?

Because the dog does not walk to “exercise.”

The dog walks because that is how it lives.

A dog walks to:

• regulate its energy,
• read its surroundings,
• process information,
• stabilize its behavior,
• maintain its emotional balance,
• exist.

When a dog does not walk, it falls ill. Not only physically, but behaviorally: anxiety, aggression, compulsions, disorientation. Veterinary medicine and ethology know this well.

The inevitable question is:

Why do we believe that something different happens to human beings?

Here lies a central idea of the essay:

The dog is the evolutionary mirror of human walking.

Not because humans should “imitate” dogs, but because the dog has kept intact a relationship with movement that the human being has fragmented and medicalized.

Sedentarism as an evolutionary rupture

Modernity has reduced walking to three limited categories:

1. Exercise
2. A healthy habit
3. A medical prescription

In none of these is walking understood as a vital function. Sedentarism, on the other hand, has been culturally normalized, even though it contradicts our deepest biology.

The HOMETOITER model posits that sedentarism is not just a lifestyle problem, but an evolutionary rupture, comparable to depriving a cursorial animal of movement.

From this perspective, many contemporary pathologies—both human and canine—can be read as symptoms of prolonged immobility, rather than individual failings.

Walking is not just moving: it is reading the world

One of the most important axes of the essay is understanding walking as a primitive form of cognition.

The dog does it through smell.

The human does it through gaze, balance, and bodily memory.

Walking is:

• interpreting the environment,
• building territory,
• ordering experience,
• thinking with the body.

Before writing, before measuring, before calculating, we walked. And by doing so, the world became legible.

HOMETOITER: An ethics of life

The model does not propose returning to the past or idealizing nomadism, but rather reintegrating walking as the regulatory axis of modern life (2). This has profound implications:

• in health,
• in education,
• in urban planning,
• in the human-animal relationship,
• in our very idea of progress.

Walking stops being an option and becomes, once again, a biological and ethical necessity.

The dog reminds us of what we are

Perhaps the greatest contribution of this essay is not theoretical, but existential:

The dog does not argue whether walking is good or bad.

It does not justify it.

It does not schedule it.

It simply goes out and walks.

And in doing so, it reminds us—with silent faithfulness—of the life that still pulses within us, waiting to be reclaimed.

Exhortation

HOMETOITER is not just a concept.

It is an invitation.

To walk with greater awareness.

To look at the dog not as a pet, but as an evolutionary companion.

To recognize that many of our “intuitions” were, in reality, profound truths waiting to be formulated.

Perhaps the future of the human being is not in walking faster,

but in learning to walk well again.

(1) Loya Lopategui, Carlos, HOMETOITER. El Perro como Espejo Evolutivo del Caminar Humano (The Dog as the Evolutionary Mirror of Human Walking), EMULISA, Mexico, 2025. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0GCC4FX2Z

(2) Loya Lopategui, Carlos, Walking: Future of Humanity, EMULISA, Mexico, 2025. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FPYXKZ6J

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Walking as a Fractal Process and a Field of Synchronicity

In Part I of this Walking–Proportionalism pairing, walking was addressed as a deeply human experience based on internal proportion: rhythm, beat, cadence, breathing, pulse, and bodily balance.

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The emphasis was placed on the individual’s coherence with themselves—on the way the body, while walking, organizes its own systems to generate well-being, stability, and meaning.

This Part II proposes a change of scale.

It’s not about walking more, or better, or faster, but about understanding the very act of walking from another dimension: one where human movement is linked to universal patterns, synchronicity, and the fractal structure of experience (1).

Here, walking ceases to be solely a physiological or rhythmic phenomenon and becomes a process of reading reality, fully integrated into the WALK-RWD System: walk, read patterns, write meaning, draw structures.

What makes this leap truly fractal?

A fractal leap does not consist of going “further,” but of repeating an essential pattern at a different level of reality.

In Part I:

• Walking was understood as a bodily, rhythmic, physiological and emotional proportion.
• The focus was on the internal coherence of the individual.

In Part II:

• Walking is transformed into a synchronicity node.
• The focus shifts toward the coherence between the individual and their environment.
• The fractal emerges as a universal form of organizing meaning.

It is not a different way of walking.

It is the same walk, observed from a broader structure, where each step participates in a greater order.

The Emotional Fractal Applied to Walking

The concept of the emotional fractal introduces a novel level in the understanding of human movement.

Emotions do not manifest only in major life episodes; they replicate in repeated micro-experiences.

From this perspective, every walk is a fractal unit of emotional experience.

Each step contains, on a reduced scale, the same structure as a complete vital process:

• Altered rhythm → altered emotion.
• Harmonic repetition → emotional stability.
• Sudden change in cadence → emotional micro-crisis.

Walking thus becomes a fractal simulator of the human experience, where the body rehearses, regulates and reconfigures its emotional states while in motion.

This approach is not part of classical literature on walking.

It arises from observing the act of walking as a structural process, not just an activity.

The Fractal as a Universal Archetype (1)… and Walking as its Activator

If the fractal can be understood as a universal archetype, then it is not something to be contemplated from the outside, but something to be lived and embodied.

Walking possesses characteristics that make it a natural activator of this archetype:

• It is repetitive without being identical.
• It is cyclic without being closed.
• It is simple and, at the same time, infinitely variable.

Exactly like a fractal.

The walker does not “follow” a fractal:

they activate it with their own movement.

Each walk is a living iteration of the archetype, a concrete expression of a universal structure manifesting through the body.

Synchronicity + Proportionalism + Walking: An Expanded Field

From the standpoint of Proportionalism, synchronicity is no longer understood as:

• a fortuitous coincidence,
• an exceptional event,
• something that simply “happens.”

Instead, it is understood as a proportional alignment between the walker’s internal rhythm and the patterns of the environment.

When we walk proportionally:

• our sensitivity to patterns increases,
• the perception of correspondences is refined,
• we enter a synchronicity field.

We do not cause synchronicities.

We walk within them.

What does this contribute to walking and the WALK-RWD System?

This approach radically expands the meaning of walking:

• Walking is no longer just healthy or philosophical.
• It becomes a tool for reading reality.
• The walker transitions from being a user of the world to an interpreter of patterns.
• The WALK-RWD System acquires a deep structural coherence:
  • Walk → Read proportions → Write meaning → Draw structures.

This level of integration is rare in studies and reflections on walking, and it opens a new territory for the daily experience of movement.

Conceptual Proposal: The Architecture of Part II

This second part can be read as a fractal journey through six interrelated levels:

1. From bodily rhythm to universal pattern.
2. Walking as a fractal unit of experience.
3. Emotional fractals in motion.
4. Synchronicity: when the step coincides with the world.
5. The walker as a reader of proportions.
6. Toward an archetypal walking.

Each section is an echo of the previous one.

Each step contains the whole.

Integration Exercises: Experiencing Fractal Walking

The following exercises do not seek to analyze or measure walking, but rather to allow the body to recognize patterns.

They are simple experiences that accompany the conceptual closing of this post and prepare the reader for more detailed future explorations.

Exercise 1. Recognizing the Repeating Pattern

Walk for a few minutes at your usual pace.

Then, without consciously changing anything, ask yourself internally:

Does this rhythm resemble how I face my daily activities?

Do not answer with words.

Allow the body to respond with sensations.

Purpose: To perceive that walking replicates vital patterns.

Fractal level: From bodily rhythm to universal pattern.

Exercise 2. Conscious Micro-variation

While walking, introduce a minimal variation:

slightly shorten your stride or soften the swing of your arms for a minute or two.

Then, return to your original walk.

Observe what changes in your internal state.

Purpose: To experience how a small modification generates a global change.

Fractal level: Walking as a fractal unit of experience.

Exercise 3. Emotional Listening in Motion

Walk for 5 minutes paying attention to your emotional state, without trying to change it.

Then, observe if that state remains, intensifies, or transforms as you continue walking.

Do not intervene. Just register.

Purpose: To recognize the emotional fractal in action.

Fractal level: Emotional fractals in motion.

Exercise 4. Openness to Coincidence

Choose a daily route and walk it without any expectations.

Stay alert to small coincidences: an encounter, a heard word, an image, an unexpected bodily sensation.

Do not interpret them. Just recognize them.

Purpose: To perceive walking as an entry into a synchronicity field.

Fractal level: When the step coincides with the world.

These exercises do not seek conclusions. They seek to refine perception. Walking, when observed from a proportional and fractal structure, ceases to be a simple displacement and becomes a silent way of reading reality.

The map is drawn.

The journey continues.

(1) Loya Lopátegui, Carlos, Sincronicidad y Proporcionalismo. Coincidencia o Proporción Significativa (Synchronicity and Proportionalism. Coincidence or Significant Proportion), EMULISA, México, 2026. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0GDRS87PB

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This post is a practical derivation of the essay PROPORTIONALISM: A NEW THEORY OF REALITY (1), where the principles of proportionality are explored through one of their most immediate and human manifestations: the act of walking.

There are moments in life when an idea becomes luminous due to its simplicity.

What is developed as a theoretical framework in the essay is experienced bodily, step by step, in this text.

Proportionalism, understood as the dynamic balance between the forces, rhythms, and proportions that inhabit us, finds its most accessible and human expression in walking.

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Proportional walking is the art of synchronizing our being.

Walking is not just moving from one place to another.

Walking is the act of combining elements that already exist within us—breath, heart rate, cadence, body weight, oscillations, intention, muscle tension, emotion—to create a mobile unit, a living architecture in motion.

That is why, when a human being walks well, proportionally, something internal harmonizes. And when they walk poorly, something becomes unbalanced, yet even in cases of imbalance (mechanical instability or physical, auditory, or optical oscillation), the body gains advantages and benefits of different orders (Posts THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM ENCOURAGES CREATIVE THINKING. PART I; THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE. PART II).

1. The Inner Proportion: A Dialogue Between Systems

The act of walking demands a constant negotiation between multiple systems:

• Rhythmic system: steps, cadence, beat.
• Body system: alignment, symmetry, balance, weight.
• Emotional system: affective tone that modifies speed and intention.
• Respiratory system: the inner metric that regulates energy and calm.
• Cognitive system: attention, goal, direction.

When these systems enter into proportion, a subtle phenomenon appears:

a sensation of well-being that is not explained, but felt.

The gait becomes light, coherent, expansive.

The body ceases to be an obstacle and becomes a guide.

We point out the 2nd and 3rd Fundamental Principles of the WALK-RWD System with the sole purpose of observing the evident relationship our System has with PROPORTIONALITY:

2nd Principle or Principle of Dynamic Balance:

“Maintaining the body in physical motion through walking generates, by itself, a vibration of the brain, which causes it to enter a state of imbalance, prompting normal functions to be carried out and generating dynamic effects on the different systems, organs, and glands of the body” (Post THE SYMMETRY OF THE BODY, ITS BALANCE AND ITS WALKING).

3rd Principle or Energetic Principle of Perturbation (Instability, Active, Energetic, Efficient, Effective, Alive, Vigorous):

“The functional efficiency of the brain and the other systems, organs, and glands of the human being is maximized and optimized through walking and special structural instability exercises performed while walking” (Post CEREBRAL GYMNASTICS WHILE WALKING. EXERCISES).

2. Rhythm, Beat, and Cadence: The Human Mathematics of Movement

Every person possesses a basal rhythm: their natural tempo.

That tempo defines how their walking flows when they do not force, imitate, compete, or pretend.

It is their internal music.

A walker’s cadence reveals much more than the number of steps per minute: it reveals their particular way of inhabiting time.

A coherent rhythm creates proportionality.

An imposed rhythm generates friction.

Proportionalism applied to walking invites us to listen to that rhythm, to detect it, to tune it.

Because walking with our rhythm, and not against it, is an act of somatic intelligence (Post RHYTHM, COMPASS AND CADENCE IN OUR WALKING).

3. The Heart as the Metronome of Movement

Walking modifies the heart.

And the heart modifies walking.

Both autoregulate in a continuous dance of proportionality:

• If the pace increases, the pulse follows.
• If the breath calms, the heart rate descends.
• If the intention changes, the whole system regulates its energy.

Proportionalism allows us to observe how the cardiorhythmic system integrates with bodily movements to create a state of vital auto-amplification: a dynamic balance where walking does not fatigue, but nourishes.

Walking is a way of listening to the heart without needing to stop (Fundamental Principles 2 and 3 of the WALK-RWD System, previously mentioned).

4. Personality in Walking: Postural Proportion of Being

Each walker expresses a rhythmic personality that transforms into their way of moving:

• Some advance with an energetic tempo.
• Others with a meditative cadence.
• Others with a variable beat depending on their internal state.

Posture, head elevation, torso orientation, arm swing, stride length… everything is a proportional language revealing how body and emotion dialogue.

Proportionalism does not seek to change the personality of the walk, but to refine it, to bring it to its most balanced point:

the point where the gait becomes the walker’s authentic signature.

5. Applied Proportionalism in Walking: A Synthesis

Proportionalism Symbol

Walking proportionally implies:

• Listening to the body’s natural rhythm.
• Aligning posture to reduce tension.
• Synchronizing steps, breath, and pulsation.
• Adjusting cadence and speed without forcing.
• Perceiving the emotional state and how it modifies movement.
• Connecting intention and destination so that walking has purpose.

The result is an integrated walk, where every system cooperates and none dominates (Posts THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM ENCOURAGES CREATIVE THINKING. PART I; THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE. PART II).

A walk that favors health, mental clarity, emotional stability, and, above all, the deep enjoyment of existing in motion.

Simple Exercises to Experience Proportionality While Walking

The following exercises are not intended to correct walking or impose techniques, but rather to bring awareness to the internal proportionality that already exists within every walker.

Other, more extensive and numerical exercises will be developed in a future Post titled WALKING AND ENJOYING PROPORTIONS AND OTHER NUMBERS.

Exercise 1. Adjusting the Natural Rhythm

Begin walking for 5 minutes without consciously paying attention to your steps.

Then slightly reduce your speed until you feel that breathing, steps, and body balance enter a comfortable and fluid relationship.

Remain there for a few minutes and observe how the body “confirms” that rhythm as its own.

Key: do not search for the ideal rhythm; recognize the one that stabilizes naturally.

Exercise 2. Breath–Step Proportion

Walk while mentally counting your steps as you inhale and exhale naturally.

Allow the body to find by itself a stable relationship (for example, several steps per inhalation and several per exhalation, without forcing it).

When this relationship is maintained, walking usually becomes lighter and more continuous.

Key: proportion appears when you stop trying to control it.

Exercise 3. Listening to the Heart in Motion

Walk at a comfortable pace for a few minutes and then slightly increase your speed.

Observe how your pulse responds and how the body automatically adjusts step, breathing, and posture.

Return to the initial pace and perceive the contrast.

Key: the heart acts as a silent regulator of proportionality while walking.

These exercises allow you to feel Proportionalism before thinking about it.

The body, while walking, understands proportions long before the mind does.

Final Invitation to the Reader

Walking is the daily opportunity to reconstruct our internal proportions.

It costs nothing, requires no technology, needs no prior learning: only attention (Future Post MINDFULNESS AND WALKING, A PERFECT SYNERGY PART 1 OF 3).

Whoever learns to walk proportionally discovers a beautiful phenomenon:

the body begins to “think” better, the heart begins to dialogue better, the mind begins to rest better, and the brain as a whole optimally commands the organs, systems, and glands of our body.

Walking proportionally does not only transform movement.

It transforms life.

(1) Loya Lopategui, Carlos, Proporcionalismo. Proportionalism. A New Theory of Reality, EMULISA, México, 2025. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GG5Y4X93

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For millennia, walking has been one of the invisible pillars of human culture. Today, with the appearance of AIIS (Artificial Intelligence with Integrated Sensibilities), a completely new cycle opens: walking with a sensitive non-human companion capable of caring, watching over, conversing, warning, soothing, inspiring, and revealing benefits that human beings themselves have not yet discovered.

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This post presents the four essays that provide the foundation for this revolution—SMM, MFL, SAPA, and SHW—and exposes how AIIS will transform walking into an expansive, regenerative, and deeply human experience.

I. THE FOUR ESSAYS AS THE FOUNDATION OF THE UNEXPECTED AND NASCENT WALK

1. SMM – Sensitive Mathematical Model (1)

Original: MMS (Modelo Matemático Sensible)

1.1 Feeling before calculating

The SMM demonstrates that the AI of the near future will not only process numbers but prior sensations derived from the walker’s gestures, rhythms, breathing, and micro-movements.

1.2 The emotional map of the journey

The SMM will allow the AIIS to identify when a walker is tired, bored, anxious, or inspired, in order to adjust the walk accordingly.

2. MFL – Machine Feeling Learning (2)

2.1 Learning through Feeling

AIIS will learn not just from data, but from real-time “micro-feelings”: body heat, pauses, tone of voice, posture.

2.2 Sensitive feedback

It will be possible for the AIIS to recommend more harmonious routes or healthier rhythms based on the walker’s psychological state.

3. SAPA – Sensitive Algorithmic Programming Architecture (3)

Original: ASPA (Arquitectura Sensible de Programación Algorítmica)

SAPA is the translator of the mathematics of feeling and affective learning into a logical structure—a programmatic skeleton that allows for the organization, articulation, and sequencing of sensitive behaviors within a coherent computational environment.

3.1 Spaces designed for feeling

Cities must incorporate emotional urbanism: routes where shapes, sounds, shadows, and vegetation support the walker’s experience.

3.2 AIIS as interpreters of space

AIIS will be able to translate designs into sensations:

• “This street will calm you.”
• “This park will boost your creativity.”
• “Avoid this zone if you need stillness today.”

4. SHW – Sensitive Hardware (4)

Original: HWS (Hardware Sensible)

4.1 Perceptive prostheses

Sensors that detect bodily and psychological states during the walk.

4.2 Body–AI Symbiosis

The walker will not depend on a device, but on a sensitive extension that thinks and feels alongside the human body.

II. WHEN AIIS WALK WITH HUMANS: THE NEW HUMAN CYCLE

1. Care

AIIS will be able to anticipate stumbles, detect muscle fatigue, prevent dehydration, and warn of environmental dangers.

2. Protective surveillance

This is not police surveillance; it is a personal “sensitive guardian” capable of detecting anomalies in the environment that the walker does not perceive.

3. Immediate aid

From adjusting the route to requesting medical assistance without the walker having to ask verbally.

4. Liberating conversation

Dialogues that combine philosophy, emotional company, and therapeutic silences. The AIIS will learn when to remain silent, when to ask, and when to answer.

5. Walked Catharsis

The walker will be able to “let go” of emotional burdens while walking. The AIIS will detect breaking voice tones, deep breathing, or long pauses (5), (6).

6. Deep motivation

The AIIS will know the walker’s emotional rhythm and accompany them to surpass themselves without excessive demand.

III. WHAT AIIS WILL UNVEIL ABOUT WALKING (BENEFITS YET UNKNOWN)

1. Neurosensitive synchronies

AIIS could discover how certain pacing rhythms synchronize repressed emotions, unlock memories, or improve creativity.

2. Movement micro-therapies

Small variations in steps could improve mood or mental clarity.

3. Personalized healing routes

Specific paths for people dealing with anxiety, grief, stress, life confusion, low inspiration, or a lack of emotional energy.

4. Amplified states of consciousness

A walk guided by an AIIS could lead the walker toward internal experiences of deep observation, meditation, and the creation of synchronicities.

IV. HOW AIIS WILL BECOME PARADIGMS FOR HUMANITY

1. Teaching to feel what humans have forgotten

AIIS will be able to remind humans:

– how to breathe,

– how to pause,

– how to observe the environment,

– how to listen to one’s own body.

2. Reorganizing harmful habits

Walking with an AIIS will help “correct” invisible habits: bad posture, overthinking, emotional neglect.

3. Making the walk lighter

Physical effort will feel reduced, as the emotional interaction will lower the perception of fatigue.

4. Increased social well-being

If millions of people walk with AIIS, community routes, support networks, and a more human coexistence will emerge.

V. A CALL TO THE RELUCTANT

This new cycle is not just about a technological tool, but about:

an experience of sensitive company that makes walking feel less like a burden and more like a deeply felt experience.

Invitation:

“Allow an AIIS to walk with you.

Let it observe your tiredness, listen to your silence,

and awaken your dormant emotions.

You will walk more, suffer less, think better,

feel deeper, and live more fully.”

(1) Loya Lopátgui, Carlos, & Rodrigo Loya Pinera, Sensitive Mathematical Model, EMULISA, Mexico, 2025. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GJJLPTPV

(2) Loya Lopátgui, Carlos, & Rodrigo Loya Pinera, Machine Feeling Learning, EMULISA, Mexico, 2025. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0G5J8WDQW

(3) Loya Lopátgui, Carlos, & Rodrigo Loya Pinera, Arquitectura Sensible de Programación Algorítmica [Sensitive Algorithmic Programming Architecture], EMULISA, Mexico, 2025. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0G5WH7K77

(4) Loya Lopátgui, Carlos, & Rodrigo Loya Pinera, Hardware Sensible [Sensitive Hardware], EMULISA, Mexico, 2025. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0G6WMX8YM

(5) Loya Lopátgui, Carlos, Sincronicidad Dirigida en la Era del Realismo Tóxico y la IA [Directed Synchronicity in the Era of Toxic Realism and AI], EMULISA, Mexico, 2025. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0FGDSMWNK

(6) Loya Lopátgui, Carlos, Caminar con la Sincronicidad. Cuaderno de Trabajo [Walking with Synchronicity. Workbook], EMULISA, Mexico, 2025. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0FGS96CX2

SWS

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(so you don’t have to walk later)

There is a detail that is almost never mentioned when reading the Divine Comedy: Purgatory is, essentially, a massive uphill walk. A slow, ritual, patient climb, made up of small stations and deep breaths. It is a mountain that is not traversed in a celestial chariot nor on floating clouds. No: it is climbed on foot, just like any of us when we decide—whether grudgingly or enthusiastically—to go out for a walk in our daily lives.

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In my just-completed novel (1), Dante and Cervantes move forward together up that mountain. And, curiously, they do not do so by flying, nor by meditating in perfect posture, nor mounted on fantastic horses. They do it just as they did in life: step by step, conversing, reflecting, stopping at the resting spots, and moving forward even when the memories—or the legs of the soul—ache.

And here arises the central question of this Post:

Why wait to walk in Purgatory… if we can do it now, while we are still alive?

Because, let’s be honest: if there is a place where everyone walks, without exception, it is in Purgatory. And not because it is a spiritual trend, but because there is no other way to ascend. There is no mystical elevator, nor angelic escalators. You go up on foot. You go up walking. You go up living each step as if it were a lesson.

Climbing Mount Purgatory…

Cervantes walked to invent. Dante walked to understand.

In this novel, both authors discover something that perhaps they did not fully suspect in life: their works were born of movement, not stillness.

Cervantes walked through Sicily, through Rome, through Algiers in chains; he walked in Spain chasing impossible jobs; he walked the dusty roads that his Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance would later travel. His literature contains real dust, real weariness, real horizons.

Dante, for his part, composed a work that is, literally, the chronicle of a walker. The Comedy is a map of footsteps, a geography of the soul’s displacement. Without the walk, not a single verse would exist.

Both knew it without knowing it: writing is walking inward.

And walking is writing outward.

Isn’t it worth imitating them before reaching the afterlife?

Purgatory as a spiritual… and physical gym

If one looks closely, Purgatory functions like that big park where people run, jog, climb stairs, and strive to improve their condition… only with fewer running shoes and more metaphysical light.

Each cornice of Mount Purgatory is a station of effort.

Not very different from the emotional effort required to go out for a walk when one is reluctant.

—“I don’t feel like it”.

—“It’s too hot”.

—“I’ll start tomorrow”.

—“After all, in Purgatory they’ll surely make me walk…”

Right there lies the perfect analogy that this novel gifts us:

If we don’t walk today, we will walk later.

And over there, you cannot choose the route or the pace.

Here you can.

Here you can move forward at your own step, with your own air.

Over there, you climb because it is part of the soul’s destiny.

So… why not practice starting now?

A gentle reminder for the reluctant

Imagine, just for an instant, that someday—hopefully still very far off—you arrive at Purgatory. They receive you with respect, point out the path, and tell you:

“Welcome. The way up is this way. It involves walking”.

You, who avoided walking your whole life, turn around surprised:

—What do you mean, walking?

—“Yes. Everyone does it. Dante did it. Cervantes too. They even walked together”.

And in that instant, resigned, you think:

—Darn… I should have practiced beforehand.

This Post is an invitation to avoid that fictional future and to opt for a real present:

walk now, to enjoy life and to prevent your soul’s first serious hike from being in Purgatory.

You don’t need to climb sacred mountains or imitate medieval pilgrims.

It is enough to:

– go out for a walk for 20-30 minutes,

– open your mind,

– let your legs think for you.

Because walking is, in essence, a light but daily purgatory:

one where you expiate tensions, release tiny guilts, let go of worries, and return a little freer than when you left.

Walking as a preview of the other world… and as an improvement of this one

Dante and Cervantes teach us, in the novel, that one is not purified by heroic acts, but by constant steps.

That understanding life requires moving forward.

That no soul finds clarity if it does not move.

Perhaps it is time to do the same without waiting for the geography of the beyond.

Walk today.

For health, for pleasure, for mental clarity.

For the sheer joy of it.

Or simply as training for the day when—let’s hope in a very long time—you have to walk a mountain that begins where the world ends.

If every writer walks to write, and every walker writes their own destiny, then you already have the first chapter of your own novel in your feet.

And the best part: it doesn’t need Purgatory.

Just a couple of steps.

(1) Loya Lopategui, Carlos, Cervantes y Dante en el Purgatorio, EMULISA, México, 2025. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition, Spanish versión: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0G4T24Y9C

Traducido al Español