“What is humanity, really, but a family of families?” ~ Vivek Murthy (US Surgeon General)

In a recent article in The Atlantic on friendship, the author notes, “In the hierarchy of relationships, friendships are at the bottom. Romantic partners, parents, children—all these come first. Friendships are unique relationships because unlike family relationships, we choose to enter into them. And unlike other voluntary bonds, such as marriages and romantic relationships, they lack a formal structure.”

This latest camino desert odyssey was with 6 friends. As it was a second passage (all having been for the first passage over the past few years, though most did not know each other), I knew each of them and have the privilege of calling them friends. It was a choice each made to be on the camino, albeit with some reserve on the part of some. Because it was voluntary, both to be together and to be walking over a hundred kilometres, it was thus enlivening. We chose to be with each other, planting one step in front of the other for close to 200,000 steps over 6 days. Perhaps, paradoxically that friendships are at the bottom of the relational hierarchy, they have the most potential for growth. I’m Exhibit A in having to live that reality especially after the significant pivot in my life in 2014.

Upon arrival in transit, a companion sojourner and I were offloaded due to a late inbound, to another flight, delaying our arrival by 6 hours. Upon arrival in Santiago, her bag arrived but mine didn’t. This is a peregrino’s (camino pilgrim’s) worse nightmare as all that’s critical for walking the camino was in the misplaced/delayed luggage. My despair led me to blurt out immaturely, “I can’t @#*^# do this! I don’t want to do this anymore!”

Walking in borrowed shoes

Lesson one in walking at the speed of friendship – gratitude and reliance. What are the odds that one of the sojourners would have an extra pair of hiking shoes that fit my feet exactly (he was the only other male in the group), with the accompanying merino wool socks to wick away moisture and lessen friction that often result in blisters? Yes, amid my devastation, I was the immensely grateful recipient of a pair of borrowed shoes (and socks). I have divested myself of much of my material possessions since August 2014, and this was another lesson in the journey of faith and often, the reliance on others for provision.

Each step I took, was a step of grateful humility. The most critical equipment on the camino – shoes and socks – were graciously provided. I was reminded that I am a sojourner here on earth. What is mine is not mine and even if it is, it’s temporal. I am merely a steward – what I have is borrowed. Walking this earth on the camino in borrowed shoes reminded me to be grateful for the gift of feet with which to be able to wear shoes, the strength to be able to walk, and the gracious generosity of a friend in whose borrowed shoes I walked.

Walking amidst intense emotions

Two days after embarking on the camino, I received notification that my bag had been located and was being delivered. In the pouring rain, I chased down the van that held my precious luggage, till it turned the corner and sped off. Through the help of a friend in the UK who was able to track the driver down (I was in Spain), I was able to receive my luggage a few hours later. In between awaiting the delivery of my bag and dinner, I received a letter from someone very dear to me that left me utterly gutted and devastated. I could not bring myself to joining the sojourners for dinner even though I was their guide.

Eventually, as the turmoil of emotions quelled, and amidst the supportive texts from the camino sojourners, I did join them for dinner. Lesson two in walking at the speed of friendship is the liberation of being accepted in whatever state I was in (and it was a terrible state), without judgement or even seeking to advise or help. Yet, precisely because of the unconditionality of love and friendship, I wanted to be better than the state I was in – for them, but more significantly, for me.

The rhythm of the camino, the rhythm of walking is that when one leg moves forward, the other lags and rests. This is also the rhythm of true friendship – the alternating of community and solitude. Ken Nerburn saliently notes, “In the same way that music is made alive by the silence that surrounds the notes, a day comes alive by the silence that surrounds our actions.” Friendship is made alive by the silence (often in solitude) that surrounds community.

Walking betwixt the question and the ‘quest-I’m-on’

The camino marker that points in the direction the pilgrim is to take is often the only means of navigating. GPS is often unavailable as the cell signal on the camino is sporadic. Even if it were available, GPS takes you on the shortest route, which is often along the road or highway – the last place you want to be walking the camino. Yet, these camino markers are only visible within a few metres of a fork or crossroads (I am convinced this is an intentional design).

Our human tendency is to want to figure the way we should go often way ahead of the time we need to know. There is a place for that in some instances, but not in all. When we are overly concerned about the future, we miss the present. We miss the beauty that surrounds us. We miss the people in our lives. We may even miss our lives even as we’re living it. The question that preoccupies us of which direction to go (when we are walking at the speed of life and friendship), way ahead of when we need to know it, blurs the present because it is too focussed on the future.

Lesson three of walking at the speed of friendship on the camino – whether of Santiago or of Life – is to be present to the present, to enjoy who and what is with us even as we make our way toward what lies ahead of us. To live the space between the question and the eventual answer is to fully immerse oneself into, what a sojourner so poignantly and insightfully put it, is the ‘quest-I’m-on’. There is more to be discovered in this space that in the eventual answer.

The lessons of friendship didn’t end with the camino. The end of the Camino Santiago is the beginning of the Camino of Life. Over the course of the month following the Camino Santiago, I was with friends, some of whom I worked with for over 2 decades, others for whom my relationship has morphed from family to friend, others whom I had lost contact with but on this trip, rekindled. Each was an expression of beauty, of unconditional friendship and love, notwithstanding the breach brought about by August 2014 in some of those relationships.

Walking at the speed of friendship is about intentionally, with fluidity, mining the essence of these friendships in spite of the inevitable bumps and detours along the way. Walking at the speed of friendship is not obscuring the reasons that led to the breach, but transcending them.

“Unless you change and become like a little child….” ~ Jesus

On February 28th, 2023, what was old became new. A friendship forged 34 years ago, nurtured in shared vision, disrupted by time, distance, and drift, forged in mutual adversity, now rekindled in reconnection. My brother, Dinesh, who saw beyond his legal profession, left that security to embark on a journey over the last 3 decades to rescue prisoners’ children. When I asked a very good friend (who is in key leadership in the prison system), who are the least served in the prison, his answer, spoken without a moment’s hesitation, stunned me. I expected him to say those who are serving life sentences, or those who have medical or mental conditions that require segregation, or the habitual person who reoffends for whom the system has all but given up hope of rehabilitation. Instead, he said, “The families of prisoners, especially their children.”

Even whilst providing hygiene and others essentials, setting up prison libraries across all 76 prisons, Dinesh was drawn to the plight of the prisoner’s child. Not just children, but that one child languishing in prison with a parent (see Hope in the Ruins – https://books.friesenpress.com/Ron-Nikkel-Hope-In-the-ruins by Ron Nikkel, PFI President Emeritus). The past 3 decades have seen thousands of children rescued, placed in kin care or where there is no family, residential care (set up by Victim Support and Rehabilitation Programme, the charity that Dinesh founded). Some have grown up to become school principals, and commercial airline pilots, bankers, IT specialists, fathers and mothers, upstanding members of their communities.

I write this as a preface to pivot to offer a reflection on the title of this blog – walking at the speed of a child. In my last blog post, it was about walking at the speed of life. The refreshed look at the old in Nepal surfaced these incredible lessons:

The True Generosity of a Child 

Someone once poignantly said that true generosity is not when you have something to give, but when there’s nothing in you that wants to take. Our human nature seeks to take, to extract a transaction with every interaction. Before a certain age, even amidst social conditioning, compounded by deprivation, there is a spark of human purity for which giving without getting, exists. One child in the Peace-Loving Home in Pokhara, Nepal, all of 5 years old, had just been placed in the home at his mother’s request. With pain in her heart at being separated from her son, she selflessly knew he would have a better life outside the barbed-wired prison compound where she was serving a prison sentence. 

The deprivation of every aspect of life essential for survival, made every morsel of food, every article of clothing, something to be clung to tightly. At the home, less than a half year after being rescued, he was given two origami spinning tops made by one of the team members whom I accompanied on this trip. He guarded it with his life, his eyes darting back and forth to ensure there was no threat of being dispossessed of his precious spinning tops. When he was asked to share, unbeknownst to the one who asked, he hesitatingly but willingly did. There was fear in his eyes that he might never see the spinning tops again, but there was no selfishness. True generosity – nothing in this 5-year-old needed to take. 

Walking at the speed of a child means that not every interaction need be a transaction. Not everything given needs to be reciprocated by a thing received. “Unless you change and become like a little child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Yikes! The speed of a little child resides in their posture to scarcity and deprivation, which is not hoarding, but true generosity. I learnt a valuable lesson that day – a 59-year-old from a 5-year-old. 

The Transparency of a Child 

Before the age of 5 or thereabouts, a child is unable to distinguish between what he/she knows and what everyone else knows. In other words, a child believes that what he/she knows is what everyone else knows. So, a child may come back from kindergarten and announce that Gilbert died, for which his/her mother will be puzzled as to who Gilbert is. When the child is asked who Gilbert is, the quizzical look on the child’s face is because he/she is wondering why his/her mother doesn’t know. His/her assumption is that what he/she knows, his/her mother would also know. 

When that naivety is dispelled, the advent of secrets and opacity begins to set in. Now the child realises that what they know is not known to others unless they choose to reveal it. Secrets are kept as a realisation of the fact that I can do something out of sight, in secret, and you won’t know unless I tell you. Lies are a consequence of the knowledge that I can tell you that I didn’t do something if you hadn’t witnessed it, even if I did do it. Gossip works in much the same way because what I don’t reveal, or reveal selectively, stands the chance of not being found out by those I choose not to reveal it to, trusting that you’ll keep the secret. 

Following the events of August 30th, 2014, my secrets were revealed and the choice I had was what to do with those revealed, exposed secrets. Denial, obfuscation were options. I chose otherwise. Some people have levelled the charge that I have and am being too transparent. Some would rather not know. Others were/are genuinely worried about the consequences of being transparent. My desire to be circumspect but transparent was not bravado but honesty. As a friend said to me early in the aftermath of August 30th, honesty is not only not lying; it’s telling the whole truth. In other words, not just half the truth. 

The way Dinesh relates to the children at the home or those in kin care assumes a posture of transparency. The child knows, as do the people Dinesh speaks with, the child’s history to the extent that it’s relevant to what needs to be known. Even the children who are aware of their background, are open about it. I wonder if we were more transparent about our past, we might then not seek to create different personas to project what we would like others to see of us, rather than let them see who we are. We choose opacity over transparency. The problem is not the personas. The problem is that our personas become our personhood and what we want others to see is what we eventually see as well. The masks we wear are indistinguishable from the person we truly are, our authentic selves. We fool others and tragically, we also end up fooling ourselves. 

Selfishly, I needed this trip to be reminded of what truly matters. Someone once quipped that if knowledge is about learning, then wisdom is about unlearning. It is certainly true in my life. I have a lot less materially now, and I hope I have changed to be truly generous. I have had my masks and personas stripped away as a consequence of August 2014, and I hope my transparency offers and does not offend. I hope I am reborn, this 59-year-old child.     

Actio Sequitur Esse (Action Follows Essence):

1. What keeps you from expressing true generosity? What will it take for you not to view each interaction as a transaction, and instead allow it to be transformation for you and the other?

2. What gets in the way of allowing yourself to be transparent? Of being truly known – to others, and most importantly, to yourself? 

“Not all who wonder, or wander are lost.” ~ JRR Tolkien

For over a thousand years, many have walked the Camino Santiago (including one I draw immense inspiration from – Francis of Assisi – who walked the Camino from Italy to Santiago, Spain in 1214). Walking the Camino as a pilgrim (or peregrino as those on the Camino Santiago are called), has been a dream for quite some time. Through the generosity of two friends whom I accompanied and curated a walking desert odyssey, the opportunity presented itself in September 2022.

The inevitable question many who know about the Camino Santiago ask is why I was personally making this pilgrimage. Apart from being companions to two wonderful friends, I didn’t have any expectations prior to, nor any revelatory discoveries following the  Camino, at least not to my conscious mind. Even as I write this, there is a deep unexplained stirring in my soul, and perhaps that is as it should be – that my finite mind has not yet, and might never, fully comprehend the breadth and depth of what I experienced. Here is my feeble attempt to mine some of the depth of what was experienced:

 

Walking in cadence with your heartbeat

I resonate deeply with Tolkien’s words that all who wonder, and wander are not lost. I’ll unpack this further in subsequent blogs. An excerpt from ‘Bring on the Wonder’, a song by Susan Enan:

I don’t have the time for a drink from the cup
Let’s rest for a while till our souls catches up

Bring on the wonder
Bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

Bring on the wonder
We got it all wrong
We pushed you down deep in our souls, so hang on

That is the refrain of the busy – we don’t have the time. Walking the Camino is a gift of time serving us, and not the tragic imprisonment of our souls in our serving time. A curious phrase we attribute to those who are incarcerated, yet tragically, could well be spoken of many of us who are physically free, yet not.

Given the time I had in taking about 200,000 steps on the Camino over 7 days, I did some mental calculations. With an elevated heart rate while walking of perhaps 100 beats a minute and the distance covered, taking into consideration the length of each stride, effectively, every step taken is in cadence with each heartbeat. Walking is about the only human activity that is in sync with life. When we walk, we walk at the speed of life (our heartbeat).

Even as we speak of the various issues of sustainability – environmental, climatic, natural resources – I wonder if Mahatma Gandhi’s maxim, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” might be wisely heeded as we walk at the speed of life, for true sustainability.

When you take 200,000 steps, you also notice an obvious but overlooked phenomenon – when one foot is activated to take a step forward, the other foot lags to rest. Doing and being must be in balance.

Inhabiting a space larger than your ego can fill

A question that has been posed to me since August 2014 is why I wasn’t ‘going back’ (curious yet a pointedly accurate and ironic phrase), to some semblance of my life prior to August 2014. I discovered the answer in part on the Camino. ‘Going back’, was precisely that. ‘Going back’ was to return to that which gave me a sense of identity, the personas/masks for which my face has grown to fit, and not the other way around, i.e., the persona/mask that fit my face, my core identity.

This next dispensation of my life is about a measure of hiddenness, brought into poignant reality on the Camino. Nobody knew me. We were all peregrinos, no matter how lofty the positions we hold or not.

A beautiful parable:  a junior monk sees an older monk walking and asks, “What are you on pilgrimage for?” the junior monk asks. “I don’t know,” the elder answers, adding, “Non-knowing is most intimate.” Some of the most intimate experiences in life come when you can observe your journey without the expectation of some payoff. Outcomes are important but not always. To inhabit a space larger than one’s ego can fill, at times with more questions than answers, is daunting yet wonderfully enlivening.

Higher speeds diminish our peripheral vision 

Getting to our destination as quickly as we can is the default objective. So, we jump into our car, ride the train, hop on an airplane. Totally understandable but tragically limiting. We miss the journey and the people and things that truly sustain us. We miss life even as we’re living it.

When we drive, or even when we run, our field of vision narrows to about 90 degrees as we need to focus on the road ahead. On the Camino, walking at the speed of life, every step in cadence with the heartbeat, widens the field of vision to 270 degrees. Walking allows the canvas of our lives to be fully utilised so as to paint the vast beauty of our very lives; missed in the speed that diminishes our peripheral vision, obscuring the parts of our canvas sadly left unexplored, unpainted. We observe less, we take in less, we discover less, and consequently, we feel less, are less.

I wonder – if we decreased our speed, might we see more intentionally, listen more deliberately, speak more circumspectly? Might we slow down long enough to understand another’s points of view rather than just rush headlong into the future clinging obstinately to ours?

It would be a joy for me to accompany you on the Camino Santiago when you sense the time is right for you (look out for details on desertodyssey.com). In the meantime, I leave you with the beautiful exchange of greeting of peregrinos, “Buen Camino!” as you journey on the Camino of Life.

 

Actio Sequitur Esse (Action Follows Essence):

1. What does ‘walking at the speed of life’ mean for you? How will you find ways to balance being with doing?  

2. How might we divest ourselves, even momentarily, from the insatiable expectations from activities we engage in, and more so, people we interact with?

3. What parts of my life’s canvas am I missing because of my focused intent to move forward faster?