On August 8, 2015, my boss of the past seven years passed away. I knew it was coming; I chose to stay with her until the end over three years ago when she was diagnosed with metastatic brain tumors. But how much can I say that everything else about this has been expected? Knowing change was coming still didn't give me any clarity on what it would look or feel like, or how I would respond. And it's so much harder than I thought it would be. I'm usually pretty good about making decisions, but now with so many to make and so many things out of my control, I feel like I'm floating in space, unable to move in any direction even if I wanted to.
But there was one choice I could make. I now had the time to walk the Camino de Santiago, a 500+ medieval pilgrimage route that follows the northern border of Spain all the way to the western coast.
I wrote about this decision a little more on my fundraising page: www.gofundme.com/alisonscamino (yes, shameless plug for donations. I don't care. I don't have a job!) Honestly, I can't say much about my motivation to do this other than I thought it might be nice to take a long walk. And certainly there are things I've done for which this might help atone.
In my typical type A fashion, once I made the decision I bought all the guidebooks and the personal memoirs that had been written and started gorging on the written anecdotes of experiences past. It quickly became apparent to me that this long walk was more than just that. It was so transformative that not a small number of people who did it felt compelled to write down what happened to them, even though they're not very good writers, or their problems and "things to work on" might seem mundane to anyone but them. Or they're overly mystical in their enthusiasm, which makes my cynicism flare up. Reading all of this stuff became overwhelming. It was stressful, and created an internal pressure for me to also have an earth-shaking experience.
There's a lot of pressure (self-inflicted) to come out of this different. To change in some way, or to be moved deeply. The fear I have is that I'll just return from a very long, very boring walk, petulant as ever. I fear putting stress on myself to have an "experience," but possibly the thing I fear more is finding out that there's no growth left inside of me.
I came across this Carl Jung quote:
"The way is not without danger. Everything good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things. It is a matter of yea-saying to oneself, of taking one’s self as the most serious of tasks, of being conscious of everything one does, and keeping it constantly before one's eyes in all its dubious aspects -- truly a task that taxes us to the utmost." -Carl Jung, from his Commentary on "The Secret of the Golden Flower.
Reading that made me realize that I have been worried about the Camino not affecting me, but it is not the job of the Camino to do so. The work that needs to be done is fulfilled through my own efforts and will. If I see an opportunity to grow and become a better person, that labor is my own responsibility. The Camino is simply time to do the work.
I can walk 500 miles. It will be hard. But the real exertion will be internal.
Comentários