Pausing, Pilgrim Style
“We have two lives. The second begins the day we realize that we have only one.” – Confucius
A few days from now, Franca and I will begin walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain. For anyone not familiar (here’s an entertaining film you’ve probably already seen about it), the Way of Saint James, is a deeply spiritual pilgrimage, several centuries old, undertaken by people from all over the world.
There are many different routes one can choose to reach the famous namesake town of Santiago de Compostela (we’ll be walking the Primitivo, or Original Way). Some routes take a few days or weeks, and others a month or more. Whatever the distance, the reasons people give for having put themselves through such physical hardship and rigors of walking 25-40km a day, day after day, vary, too.
Some do it for religious reasons, others for their health and wellbeing. Some say it’s just for the fun and adventure. High on the list for most wayfarers—whether they knew it at the time or not—is the pause it allowed them to disconnect from the world in a way that feels wholly alien in today’s crazy, go-go-go culture. As does, I’m sure for many, the notion of walking for days on end. The question arises: Why? To what end?
In our case, walking the Camino has been a dream quest for many years now, the timing of which couldn’t be better as it arrives as we’re both celebrating our 60th birthdays and 30th wedding anniversary. It comes, too, at a very special time in our lives, as we have fully settled into our lives here in Sicily and are now, at this marvelous age and turning point, looking forward to a future we’d hardly ever before had the chance to imagine—or maybe taken the time to imagine is the more accurate way to put it, because even how we use our imagination has been framed in terms of future return, its value.
Be. More. Pilgrim.
It certainly took imagination of a special nature to move to Sicily, but for three years now our days have been punctuated by one To-do list after another. We’ve not been merely living paradise on a beautiful island in the Mediterranean enjoying the fruits of our past labors. There were things to do, plans to lay, undertakings to complete and trials to tackle.
I’m not complaining—we still live on the aforementioned island. But a decade ago I first wrote about navigating the world as a pilgrim of sorts when I found the image of a traveler, rucksack stuffed with provisions, seeking others to share in the stories of life, a promising antidote to life’s challenges. The purpose of a pilgrim is mostly to be, not become and we are still learning, still evolving.
The Camino is a chance to pause all that, to elevate and encourage a slower, more leisurely approach to life, and while the word pilgrim itself does not convey necessarily a message of rest, it stands in very nicely, I think, for the question of how we use time. Modern society asks that we treat it solely as something to be used as well as possible. A factor of which, if paid close attention to, will help one get ahead.
Enjoying leisure for its own sake, Burkeman writes, “comes to feel as though it’s somehow not quite enough. It begins to feel as though you're failing at life, in some indistinct way, if you're not treating your time off as an investment in your future.”
It's easier said than done though, I know. Undertaking a long walk seems pointless in terms of its usefulness, and it might even begin to feel like a chore, if what we’re seeking is only the payoff of having done it. We both hope it yields something more valuable. In the words of Rumi, “It’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”
Which makes as much sense as anything. If what comes of spending some time with no other objective than putting one foot in front of the other is a better understanding of our emotions so that we may embrace self-awareness and engage with compassion and empathy others and especially those whom we love, perhaps the quiet of a long walk is not asking too much.
Like that pause I mentioned last week, the one that sometimes comes in conversation—we're so conditioned to fill the silence, to keep things moving. Stopping in stillness, for even a moment, can feel powerful.
