Walking

Spiritual Exercises 1: Putting the basics in place

Habits

He who wishes to cure his soul must also consider making changes to the very pettiest of his habits. Many a man curses his environment ten times and pays little heed to the fact that he has created for himself a law of habit

Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, §462

Do you have any habits that you want to break? Or ones that you want to start?

Sometimes we separate the grand things of life from the basic. Spirituality, religion, morality, the love of art and music and literature often seems to operate on a different level to our basic needs - sleep, diet, exercise, good company.

There is, of course, the realisation that mental health and wellbeing rely on these basic habits. But Nietzsche takes us further than this.

If we accept the idea that we are our bodies - and nothing more - then we also accept that even our ethical systems arise from our basic needs, and whether we are meeting them or not.

In other words, the way you think about right and wrong, good and evil, might have more to do w…