Day 89 of Project 2015

We just received an email to confirm that an exhibition about the Camino is opened now in Santiago. And we had totally forgotten about it but we were a part of it. We were asked to be filmed and it became part of an exhibit for a museum. We were apparently the first Aussies they had interviewed. 🙂 What a pleasant surprise!

It’s been kind of a weird day actually. We can’t quite explain why but it’s just felt that way. So that was a great way to finish today.

Summary of March 30

Newbies

We drove without using any maps or GPS guidance to get to David’s brother’s house. Every time we have been so far, we have tried a different route or path but today we went along the way we found to be the most direct and quickest (with minimal traffic lights). 

Brighter/Different Perspective? 

We put our car into service and David turned up at 4-ish to pick it up. And apparently it was meant to be all ready to go by 3.30pm. Anyway, he ended up having to wait until almost 4.30pm to be able to leave with it… but we had to just accept it for what it was! 

Day 5 of Project 2015

We bought a board game “Googly Eyes” for our 8-year-old nephew for Christmas. The game involves drawing and guessing what people are drawing while they are wearing vision-altering googles.

And from this game alone, we had some take-home messages.

(1) We got to see life in a whole different perspective LITERALLY. The vision that we have to see things “clearly” without assistance – the game took our appreciation of our eyesight to a whole new level.

This is what it looked like through the glasses at the game board.

 

(2) It is okay to relax and let loose. Laugh at ourselves sometimes and just have fun!

(3) We are terrible at drawing (or are we?), We did much better than we expected and when we have our nephews saying, “That’s actually pretty good!” – It really does boost up our confidence and does show how important perspective really is.

Summary of January 5

Newbies

Today we experienced what it would be like to be parents to 4 children. We took our 3 nephews and niece to the movies – it was lots of fun but lots of hard work too. We really do admire those who are parents to be able to manage the land of little people. 

Brighter/Different Perspective?

Not to take ourselves so seriously – being light-hearted and having a laugh is so refreshing. Yep, we looked pretty goofy! 

As Charlie Chaplin once said:

“A day without laughter is a day wasted.”  

Day 1 of Project 2015

Happy New Year!!

Cannot believe we are at the start of another year – that means we are at the start of our “project”/”experiment” at looking at life from a brighter perspective.

This morning, as we sat at breakfast reflecting on 2014 and what lies ahead for us, we thought, there is so much more than just thinking about things from a brighter perspective – sometimes it’s looking at things from a different perspective.

So what is in store for us in the coming days, months and year ahead?

A lot of reflecting on our every day, on the little things, on the things that don’t look profound or memorable, on the things we may prefer to forget or on the things that let us down.

Our challenge for the year ahead to turn things around and see it all in a positive light or simply from a different angle. This fresh outlook can’t do any harm but if it can do some good – well, then that’s just darn brilliant.

Along with seeing things differently, we are setting ourselves some goals to try and “slow down” time. We want to see if it’s possible because we recently read that if we did different things all the time, our perception of time changes. So let’s see if that is also true. As part of this challenge, every day of the year, we are also going to try something new or do something differently. Out with routine and in with variety.

And this blog endeavours to capture how this year-long challenge/project/experiment/mindset goes. This time next year, we want to be writing how we had a year that lasted longer than 365 days (luckily it’s not a leap year) and that we really had more highs than lows. We want 2015 to be a year where nothing is going to get us down…. NOTHING!

Wish us luck and join us for the ride.

Here we are at Day 1! And what can we share….

Today to mark the beginning of something fantastic this year, we chose to sit down and write down some goals for 2015. Then we decided to spend it doing things that we wanted our year to be filled with… we played games, we ate good food, we laughed, we read, we exercised.

Summary for January 1

What new thing did we try? (We’ll call them “newbies” for future posts)

We made and tasted Strawberries and Cream Iced Tea. This was a Christmas gift from some very dear friends of ours. What a refreshing and delicious drink for a hot day like today. 

And for the brighter perspective?

On our evening walk today, we came across this: 

We felt this was so very symbolic of how we are going to change the way we see things. Instead of being down, we are going to pick ourselves right up again. 

And that is exactly what we did, we walked on over and fixed it as best we could. Making those bins stand upright again…. 

Off to a good start, may the positivity surround us for the next 364 days 🙂

 

Putting our words to practice…

Where do we go post-Camino to have a break and relax? We go to Paris, where else? And moreover, we are hoping that the lessons we have learnt on the Camino have stuck, and where else to practice than a city with 2.2 million people and where 27 million tourists come to visit a year.

Yes, culture shock straight away but this time, we see this city in a completely different light to what we did pre-Camino! Our biggest thrill was getting to eat something that wasn’t “Menu del dia” (i.e. Menu of the Day). We had lots of choice now gastronomically 🙂

We took a day trip to Versailles & you could describe it as a day riddled with challenges that normally we would’ve acted differently. But with only less than a week since completing our Camino, maybe we have faced our first chance to practice what we learnt!

Today we got rained upon, we got blown away, we had to line up for over 2 hours, we were surrounded by hundreds of people squeezing through tiny doorways and we had our train cancelled and needed to find another way back to the hotel.

Not once did we lose our cool and not once did we utter a negative comment and not once did we resent the situation we were in. Hopefully, we are beginning to realise that the negative reactions creates nothing else but pain for ourselves. And why would we choose to do that?

All the while, we accepted the situation we were in and carried on. We saw lots of other emotions in our fellow travellers and we just knew which ones we wanted to be – the happy and carefree ones that don’t let these type of things spoil their experience. Because until we can learn that this is part of the experience, we will never really be happy.

Day 42 – Arzua to O Pedrouzo

Boy, did it rain today! It rained from the beginning to the end of the walk with NO let up at all. We were walking through so much water that our shoes and socks had no chance at staying dry.

Actually the paths looked more like waterfalls, streams or mud pools, then they did walking track. In some parts, the water was at least ankle deep. The 18 km today felt like an eternity.

The scenery and hamlets we walked through were so lush and sweet but unfortunately we didn’t get to stop to enjoy much because of the deluge of water.

Only one day out of the Camino and we were hammered with rain, possibly to cleanse our grubby bodies and shoes. After 40-odd days of walking, all the pilgrims probably could do with a quick wash! Heheheh. Maybe today was a wake up call…. Kept us from getting familiar with the routine of having mighty fine weather.

And today, we shed our first tears on the Camino. Not tears of sadness or pain but tears of elation and humbleness that we have made it so far. That we have achieved what we set out to do! That we have stayed so mentally and emotionally strong and positive and with such ease. To achieve such happiness and bliss and to be able to do it together! To be pushed to our physical limits and to endure grueling conditions at times, yet enjoyed every second of it! To be so close to completing a pilgrimage that has been around for centuries, walking the paths that so many millions have done before us.

We cried and we too felt that skies were crying with us, as the rain kept on coming!

But throughout the entire day, we didn’t wish for anything different. We accepted the rain for what it was and enjoyed every minute of soaking our feet in our shoe baths 🙂

As only in the past few days, other people have stated to us that the Camino is a metaphor for life and isn’t it just?

When it rains, it pours! And it taught us another valuable lesson. That preparation is fantastic but sometimes there are things that pop up into life that you just cannot prepare for. And although, you try to walk around it, or over it, or try to avoid it… sometimes, you just have to walk through it! That is how we felt when we had to walk through those puddles of rain. There was no more avoiding them, we just had to face them head on and deal with the “aftermath” later. And we came out unscathed and stronger.

Unless we called it quits, the result for the day would be the same – i.e the feet, shoes and socks were getting wet but what was more important and the overarching achievement was that we walked another day of the Camino! We are one day away now from Santiago and tomorrow is predicted to be raining again. But that doesn’t affect our mindset at all – never has on the Camino and so why let it now?