A Pilgrim Born

Last night, as part of my New Year’s celebration, I watched one of my favorite movies, The Way. It is an amazing story of a man coming to terms with his relationship with his estranged son and his son’s death while undertaking a pilgrimage on the Camino De Santiago in Spain.
I have always wanted to hike the Camino. I love the idea of pilgrimage, whereby travel, specifically walking, becomes a spiritual act. The strange thing about all this is that I grew up, and still am, a Protestant. Ritual and pilgrimage aren’t exactly things we do. But still, someday I will go on pilgrimage.
As trite as this may sound, I had a thought, yesterday, that all of life is essentially a pilgrimage. We’re born and instantly, we set out on road of struggle and suffering that ultimately brings sanctification. Not sanctification In a religious sense, but rather a vindication of purpose, all the suffering, struggling, and striving comes to point when it’s meaning and purpose is revealed. It all finally makes sense.
I know this isn’t how everyone’s life turns out, or even ho it turns out for the vast majority. But, like medieval pilgrims setting out on the Camino and hoping for absolution or a miracle, we begin this journey hoping for resolution.
I wish I had some advice or six easy steps to to completing the pilgrimage that is life, but I don’t. Maybe the most important thing to remember is that there is a purpose in every step, whether we see it or not, and hopefully, when we reach the end we will find what we were looking for.

We Know the Way

I was sitting in my office the other day, and the song We Know the Way, from the Moana soundtrack came on. This presented a problem because the song always brings tears to my eyes.
This song speaks to me on a soul level, because it is about me. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not an ancient Polynesian seafarer, I’m not even from a place near the sea, but I am a Voyager. I grew up on tales of Shackleton, Lewis and Clark, Stanley and Livingston, the Voortrekkers, and the French Voyageurs. I am the spiritual descendant of anyone who ever looked at the horizon and said, “why can’t I go there”.
Sadly, I live in an era when nomads are boxed in by borders and voyagers are thought of as unstable people who “just need to settle down”. Some were created to stay where they were born to sow and reap and multiply, but some are called to be wanderers.
I think many people in my generation feel the need to wander, and we get written off as “damn millennials”, or “dreamers” or “selfish idealists who won’t conform”. I have had a few well-meaning people tell me that they essentially think I’m crazy because I’m 33 and I haven’t settled down to a career (I have career, contrary to popular belief (I’m an English teacher)), and a house (and a mortgage), and a wife and kids. I have tried twice to please people and move back to the U.S. and begin the process of settling down and both times it nearly killed me. There is a quote that says: “There is a point in life where you either need to travel or commit suicide”.
So what is a boy to do? Follow his heart, that’s what. There are a couple of lines in We Know the Way, that says: “We read the wind the and sky when the sun is high. We sail the length of the seas, on the ocean breeze. At night we name every star, we know where we are. We know who we are, who we are”(that’s the bit that always makes me cry).
The great patriarch Abraham was a settled man living in his father’s household with his wife when God showed up and told him to go wandering. Never once did God tell Abraham to settle down, build a house, or find a job with great security and a 401k. In fact, God promised to give Abraham territory, which to a nomad means space to wander. I figure that if God is good with the father of his people wandering around, then he probably doesn’t mind if I do too.
We have the tendency to get stuck inside borders imposed on us by other people. These borders have very little to do with our own beliefs and desires, and everything to do with other people’s hang-ups. Thor Heyerdahl, the leader of the Contiki Expedition and one of the great modern voyagers, once said: “Borders? I have never seen one, but I have heard they exist in the minds of some people”. Sometimes we must trust that we know the way and set out to be who we want to be, who we have to be. Borders be damned, we know the way.

Scared Brave

I am often told by people how brave they think I am. This comes because I have made the decision to live overseas. When I hear that someone thinks I’m brave, I’m baffled by it. I am not brave, not by long shot. Unless, unless of course, we define bravery as doing something that scares you simply because your more afraid of what will happen if you don’t do that scary thing. I we do define brave that way, then yeah, I’m brave, real brave.

I once read  quote from Edward Dahlberg that said “when one realizes his life is worthless, he either travels or commits suicide.” Now that quote sounds a bit harsh, and I am not suicidal, but there is some truth in it. When we find ourselves lacking fulfillment, we either move on or we die (not always physically, but something in us dies).

And I think that is what motivates me to things that seem crazy. A normal life scares the hell out of me. I want a career, and a family, and I want to be happy, but I want to do so on my own terms. I don’t want a mortgage, or to be tied to job I hate, or wear a shirt and tie.

If I am brave, it is because I choose to run to scary things and away from my nightmare monsters of mediocrity, monotony, and stagnation. I think Jack London said it best: “I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should stifle in dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them, I shall use my time.”

For me, any number of things can happen when I travel. I once had a near panic attack when I was stung in the lip by a fried scorpion I was eating; but that fear is nothing compared to the fear I have of loss of freedom, of conformity, of having to toe the line. I still don’t think I’m brave, just weird.