Hurry Down, Slow Up!
Nothing changes after traveling. Unless you change: then everything changes.
With the sun burning on my skin, my fingers swollen to the point I cannot close my fists anymore, my calves aching with every step I take, and my blister-covered feet protesting against carrying my weight any longer, I am wondering for the umpteenth time that day what I was thinking when, quite impulsively, I decided to do this. This being the 220kms walk from Porto to Santiago de Compostela.
Only a week before, my plans for my holidays had been quite different. I was supposed to go to the Azores, to participate in a course on emotional balance. The program offered everything I had been longing for, for months: quiet, yoga, meditation, me-time, learning something mind-broadening, all the while being surrounded by nature. I imagined having a couple of nice, quiet, peaceful weeks. So when the course got canceled, it would have only made sense to book myself something similarly quiet and peaceful. Yet, instead, I decided to join my dad on his trip to Compostela. Being completely untrained for it and being not a very physically fit person, I did not expect to enjoy this trip very much. Instead, I was ready for a challenging, confronting, exhausting, and even painful two weeks. None of those are elements I particularly enjoy; in fact, I rather tend to avoid them in life, and I definitely do not choose them for vacation. Until now. Even if it had been a very spur-of-the-moment decision, it had also been a conscious choice. Why? The answer is quite simple. Though this trip was not at all what I wanted, it was exactly what I needed. Not in spite of, but precisely because of all the elements mentioned above.
I longed for peace and quiet, for having a break from everything and doing nothing for a little while. Mostly, I wanted to be somewhere with no expectations to be met, no schedules to be followed, and no phone calls to be answered. Yet, if I had gone to such a place, I would have limited myself from experiencing the world. I would have created a place, if only temporary, where I could avoid anything that would have triggered me. Sure, I would have been relaxed during those weeks. I would have enjoyed myself, though probably once there, I would have gotten bored of doing nothing. However, upon my return home, nothing would have changed. I would not have changed. So, within days of being back, I would have felt stressed again. Overwhelmed with phone calls and people’s expectations. Limited by what I thought was within (or out of) my capabilities.
Instead, I went for a change. I decided to do something that would challenge my limitations. Walking to Santiago de Compostela was the perfect opportunity.
The biggest challenge, of course, was the physical one. I am not in a good shape. I am close to being overweight and get out of breath when climbing up 4 levels of stairs if I do not pace myself. Sure, my physical condition could be worse, but it could also be much, much better.
All my life, I have avoided the physical stuff. I am a bit uncoordinated. I am not very elegant. I am not good at sports. As the years passed, I became more and more convinced I was not good at anything physical. So I focused on other things: academia, music, my job, writing. Things I felt I was good at. But in doing so, I limited myself. I robbed myself of an opportunity to learn. My beliefs about my physical (in)capabilities were more limiting than my physical boundaries. I started doing less physical activity, and as a result, I became less fit. I could do less. And thus my beliefs about myself became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was a vicious cycle.
In going on this trip, I have shattered more than one boundary. Most obviously, of course, were the physical limitations of what my body could do. I walked for 10 days, and even if it was hard, I persevered. As a result, my body got the training it lacked in all years past. I got fitter. Even if my physical limitations were surpassed during those days, I was also opening my mind. Opening my world. Things, such as walking 200kms, that had seemed impossible before, now became possible. I no longer felt so limited by myself, because during those ten days I was able to shatter (some of) my physical and mental boundaries. In doing the exact opposite of what I felt I longed for, I managed to find a long-lasting relaxation that found its roots in my altered perception of myself. Now, when confronted with something out of my comfort zone, I know that if I want to I can, whereas before I thought I could not.
During this trip, I broadened my world, instead of limiting it. I opened myself to new experiences, and with those new experiences come new perceptions. In a way, I was able to shed my restrictive views of self, thereby liberating the potential that was caged inside. Even if at the start of my trip I was not really that interested in reaching Compostela (any 200kms walk would have served the purpose), there is a sense of fulfillment that comes with reaching the destination. More so because of the road it took me to get there.
Of course, there are many ways to achieve this goal. Yet I chose a physical challenge for a reason. It is not always easy to change perceptions about oneself. So, I wanted some indisputable proof. Something that, if my mind was confronted with it, could not be refuted: if you are able to walk 200kms, then you are fit. You might not be an athlete, but you don’t need to be. Unfit people will not be able to walk 200kms. Those that do, are more physically fit than they thought themselves to be.
Moreover, different experiences will trigger different emotions and different thoughts. It is easier to change an action than to change a thought or emotional pattern. So, I chose a radically different experience. As a result, I was gifted with some radically different thoughts.
It is not surprising, this link between body and mind. After all, the brain (which science has agreed upon is the seat of all thought) has evolved out of the need of the body to move. It is quite ironic that we now live in a society where we focus so much on what can be achieved with thinking, while if not for motion, for being physically active, we would have never evolved a brain.
I’m a bit of a brainiac, but I discovered along this trail, that my creativity is more easily sparkled when I am doing something physical. My ideas become more abundant when I am physically active. This makes perfect sense because there is more input in my brain when I am out there, experiencing the world, compared to when I am browsing the web at my desk. Life is about expansion. From the moment we are born, we expand our bodies. We expand our minds. We expand the parts of the world we discover. We expand our social circles. Yet, sitting at this desk, life all too often seems to narrow down to this tunnel-shaped screen I’m currently staring at.
This trip, to me, was also about slowing down. It is one of the great ironies of this time, that for slowing down I needed to speed up. I walked 30 000 steps a day, whereas before I barely achieved 5000. Yet, the distance covered, a little over 200kms, was something that in any moment of my life would have taken me just a couple of hours, by car. Now it took me ten days.
So in the end, this journey was exactly what I needed. It provided me with everything I longed for in my vacations: peace and quiet, slowing down, disconnecting from society, and connecting with nature and with myself. Even though I did not reach all of my goals (I still work too much, and I still need to connect more with my body), it provided me with some invaluable life lessons.
