We live in interesting times, don’t we? But most of us are really very, very busy, and it’s very hard to have an adventure, because it takes a long time.
So, if we want to climb Mount Everest, probably takes two or three years of training, even though I understand now, you can pay $50,000 and have a month of training, and climb Mount Everest.
But many of these people have difficulties and quite a number actually die. Or you can perhaps go on some ocean voyage around the earth, like Magellan.
But of course, he never made it home, even though it was the first voyage that circumnavigated the globe. So recently, I had an adventure. I walked the Camino, the Way of St.
James in northern Spain, and I walked along with my walking partner, David. We walked the so-called French route, the Camino Frances. And if you go to dbawageslave.com, you can see all of the 40 days that we walked.
So as I was walking along, I realized that this is an adventure. The hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell had talked a lot about. So you begin.
You don’t want to begin, actually, but you do. You have some struggles. You overcome those struggles, and eventually you arrive back home.
And you’re the same person, but you have changed somewhat. Now, this walk took us around 35 to 40 days, and we did the whole gambit around 900 kilometers, about 2 million steps. Now, if I can do this at 69 years old, truly anyone can do this.
All that is required is to put one foot in front of the other. You have to be determined. And many people have asked me what I learned during this trip, because even though I had a walking partner, I was alone a lot of the time.
And it was time that one could reflect, of course. And I realized that life is truly endless. All, truly all is possible.
And it was actually the first time I’ve ever really realized this in my life.
All is possible, given that I am a man, I am of a certain age, I do have two children, I have a certain amount of money, a certain amount of intelligence, I am Canadian, and everything else then after this point, after those givens, as is called in
existentialism, is possible if I believe. And to be quite honest, at the beginning of this journey, I didn’t believe, I was deeply concerned that I would fail in this trek.
But slowly but surely, putting one foot in front of the other, confidence did build. And I think this is true for all of us. It is a huge life, if I decide to make it huge.
But unfortunately, it is also a very small and limited life, if I believe this as well. It’s really up to me. My perception is of my own doing.
It is my life. No one can jump inside my head and convince me, if I don’t let them. But if I listen and I convince myself that they are right with the negativity, then all is true.
I am small, and eventually I will disappear. The purpose of life is just to go to school, graduate, get a good job, meet sort of a nice girl, have some children, save lots of money, retire and die. Mostly in a state of pain and unhappiness.
If one believes this is the mission in life, it is. But if one believes it’s an explosively interesting life, it can also be all is possible.
But I’d like to recite a poem that I thought was very apropos to what I was talking about by the famous poet and writer Pablo Neruda. And he died in the 1970s, I believe, and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. So this is his poem.
We Are Many. Of the many men who I am whom we are, I cannot settle on a single one. They are lost to me under the cover of clothing.
They have departed for another city. When everything seems to be set, to show me off as a man of intelligence, the fool I keep concealed on my person takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.
On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst of people of some distinction, and when I summon my courageous self, a coward, completely unknown to me, swaddles my poor skeleton in a thousand tiny reservations.
When a stately home bursts into flames, instead of the fireman I summon, an arsonist bursts on the scene, and he is I. There is nothing I can do. What must I do to distinguish myself?
How can I put myself together? All the books I read, lionized, dazzling hero figures, brimming with self-assurance. I die with envy of them, and, in films where bullets fly on the wind, I am left in envy of the cowboys, left admiring even the horses.
But when I call upon my dashing being, out comes the same old lazy self. And so I never know just who I am, nor how many I am, nor who we will be being.
I would like to be able to touch a bell, and call up my real self, the truly me, because if I really need my proper self, I must not allow myself to disappear. While I am writing, I am far away, and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens to other people as it does to me, to see if as many people are as I am, and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored, I am going to school myself so well in things that, when I try to explain my problems, I shall speak, not of self, but of geography. In other words, make sure you live that hero’s journey.
And this is not about conquering worlds, it’s about conquering the self, isn’t it? There was no one like me, there never has been, and there never will be. But, I must open the door to me, and challenge myself, and I am actually stunningly brave.
All I need to do is push. And you know what they say, you know what they say, critical thinking is necessary, and critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care. God bless. Bye-bye.