What is more human?
Thinking or Feeling
Last Saturday I did something very ordinary for a very long time. Something that 7 million years ago was not so ordinary and began distinguishing humans from animals, and thus thought from feeling. Something that made me tired as fuck.
I walked.
I walked 25 kilometers from a small town called Pamplona in Spain to an even smaller town called Puente la Reina on a trail called Camino de Santiago. If you haven’t heard of this pilgrimage before, many walk this spiritual route of 780 kilometers across Spain for their various motivations.
On my 6-hour walk on a piece of the Camino through raw wilderness and random windmills, I too experienced many thoughts and feelings. And I questioned which part of me I liked more.
***
The thoughts came first. I love thinking, and on the Myers-Briggs personality test, my third letter is a bold T. I also think about thinking on a pretty regular basis. (To be fair, most psych majors do this).
When the Camino started, I thought about all the usual things. Did I have enough water with me. What pace would I be walking at. How many people would I meet on this “Buen Camino.” Was I going the right way. (That last one was a very helpful thought — turns out I started the journey 30 minutes in the wrong direction.)
Eventually after reversing, the city of Pamplona died down, and the wilderness became even more wild. I noticed my leg muscles twitching whenever I paused to look at the Camino shell and arrow signs. I thought about how many people must have passed those signs and wondered who painted each one onto random rocks or pathways to guide people in the right direction. They were well placed, almost like a massive treasure hunt for a community of explorers, where each person’s treasure was unique and internal.
The first Feeling came during this phase of physical discomfort. I found that I kept asking myself — “why am I even doing this?” The mental reasons of “it’s good for your health” or “so many people do it and so can I” didn’t suffice to walk 25 kilometers. I had to find some deeper reason. For a man named Claudio who I met on the trail, the reason was to release a weight. He carried a mysterious physical pesa with him throughout the Camino, something he felt represented what he’d been carrying all his life, and planned to release the weight into the sea when he finished the pilgrimage.
For me, I didn’t feel that I was carrying a weight. Because I also literally wasn’t — I packed as little as possible because I wanted the experience to be as close to niki-in-the-wild as possible. If anything, I felt curious and light. So I kept asking myself “why am I even doing this” for several kilometers until one of the floating answers finally stuck with me. For me, my reason was that I wanted to be changed. Whether or not the end experience actually changed me did not matter, but I wanted to be open to change. I adore that moment when you look back on a past version of yourself and feel that that past human was almost a different set of molecules from your current version, and I similarly sought an experience that my future self would thank my past self for choosing. I was curious to discover a new side of me.
As I journeyed, I found thoughts still triumphed over these few feelings. I wondered what I would do if I got lost or finished my last power bar, if it was more rational to go back to Pamplona, and what the probability of insects flying into a human face was.
The first sharpest Feeling I had was actually a very animalistic one. Out of nowhere, even though I had planned my water intake with all the thinking I had done… I had to pee. Now let me just say that evolution has done a very good job with making sure feelings get felt. For 45 minutes after this moment, every single thought revolved around this feeling, until it was simply a Feeling. On a long-winding trail of completely flat land and enough travelers that things could get awkward, I questioned every bush I passed as a suitable location for privacy. I thought about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (that until biological needs are fulfilled, higher purposes cannot be achieved — I hear you, Maslow) and about how men have it so easy being able to stand and pee. But most of all, I was amazed at how sharp feelings could be — and it’s something you often only recognize when you’re in the wilderness away from your thinking self.
Finally I asked someone coming in the opposite direction in Spanish if there was a place to use the restroom, and she said a word in Spanish I couldn’t catch but suggested with her hands there was a “cutout” not too far away where I could find some privacy. The cutout happened to be a mini-cemetery, behind which clearly many women had had the same idea… Unlike them though, I made sure to take my toilet paper back with me. Now all this might seem like TMI and I realize I’ve dedicated many paragraphs to this moment of success, but I must say I was really proud of this experience. I felt like a badass cave woman who could survive in the wild. I imagined myself living in the hunter-gatherer ages or living in the wild successfully without modern-day conveniences. The experience gave me the raw confidence to say that the rest of the journey could be handled. That I could conquer any feeling that came my way.
Phase 2 of Feeling began after I reached the first pueblo. I stopped for water at a tiny shop and saw some handmade bracelets that depicted a forward arrow (the guiding symbol for continuing on the Camino). I bought one and was surprised at how much easier the next phase of the journey instantly became. People will do anything for symbols and abstract ideas — war, innovation, and more. With a symbol on my wrist, every step I took was accompanied by a smile for a higher abstract purpose, which for me was “change.” I started to feel the change that I was craving — I was thinking less. My motions had become automatic, the pain was simply pleasant background noise, and I was walking solely to enjoy the beautiful sights around me — just to hear the crunch of gravel beneath my feet and to smell the flowers that were often making me sneeze. If there was any thought, it was only the appreciation of how fateful it was that all this mindfulness was happening on the exact 1-year anniversary of my beginning daily meditations, in which this same awareness-of-the-present is taught.
I enjoyed these feeling moments dearly, all the way til the end of the trail. Time played weird tricks on my mind, where the journey felt too fast and very slow at the same time. I won’t describe the feeling of reaching Puente la Reina and eating an authentic meal with some of the best Rosado wine I have ever tasted — words don’t always do justice to feelings, and besides, those feelings are mine. ;) Every person’s are beautiful and dangerous in their own way.
I did reflect on my journey though, and I specifically wondered when the feelings finally overwhelmed the thinking. (Yep, I thought about my feelings, and felt about my thoughts.)
I realized it all had to do with choice.
There was before choice, and after choice. Before I made the decision to finish the piece of the Camino, to really commit to it with no chance of returning back, I was thinking about the various future options that could unfold. I was constantly deciding. And that was a lot of thinking.
After really choosing though and deciding to walk to Puente la Reina no matter what obstacle or spider came my way, there was nothing left to think about. There was nothing left to decide, and I was free to feel and experience the consequences of the choice.
I noticed there is the freedom of choice, and there is the freedom from choice. I often practice the first one which uses all my thinking, and I believe society gives a lot of instruction on and importance to choosing well. (Not a bad thing, in fact some people could use even more instruction in this department). Freedom of choice is the freedom that’s obvious, and I’ve appreciated this thinking side of me very much. It’s the part that made me not die on the Camino, to be realistic and secure and also to write this reflection.
But these days, I’m realizing the feeling part, which is a freedom that comes only after choice, might actually be the most wild, content, stubborn, present, and surprising part of me. It’s what makes me persist in long-term ambitions, take risks in relationships, understand the dreams of others, and slow down time and experience moments. It’s what makes me curious about the world, listen and analyze more.
On the Camino I found an ever-present side of me that I haven’t embraced as much. A side I think a lot of us subdue in the midst of our continual choices. I learned that maybe feeling is the part that makes us more human, because at the end of the journey, it’s what affects our thinking the most. A paradox.
Things are getting wild,
niki ❤
