positive attitude

Day 13 – Najera to Santo Domingo

We struggled a little today! We started only slightly later than we usually do and we paid for it… Being in the sun, climbing more hills!

There was very little shade so we were grateful for the cloud cover we had at times! There were not many places to sit along the way until we hit the little towns. At least we had gorgeous scenery once again to occupy our minds and distract us!

We think we will switch back to leaving just before 7 am now to cover more ground in cooler weather before the sun comes up… let’s see!!

Wow – it was an interesting day on the road. Is it the beginning of the end? Does it all go downhill from here (and we don’t mean geographically)?

Last night, there was a fiesta in Najera and we wonder if many people didn’t get much sleep. Why do we say that? Because today on record has to be the day where we came across the MOST unfriendly, grumpy and rude people on the Camino!

This has surprised us a little but maybe this is where patience starts to fray and weariness kicks in…. Uh-oh! Is our romantic illusion of happiness and friendliness and good spirits on the Camino about to burst?

But you know what?! We learnt something from the way these people have been treating us.

That we are NOT going to let them spoil our mood or let that attitude override all the other happy and positive people we have met and still meeting. At the end of the day, we don’t know what everyone is going through… but it doesn’t mean that we have to accept them being rude to us.

We acknowledge everyone has their bad days and they are entitled to behave however they want… but is it so hard to ask for a bit of civil behaviour?

But anyway, as we said, we will focus on the good-natured souls we have met. We all deal with things differently, and we prefer not to take out a “bad” day on others.

So we hope that we can take this attitude once life on the Camino is over. We will not take it personally when people aren’t kind to us! Life is too short to worry over things like this especially when there are so many more kind-hearted people who aren’t afraid to show it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Day 11 – Logroño to Navarrete

If there’s an up, there’s a down! If there’s a happy, there’s a sad. If there’s hot, there’s cold. So if there’s sunshine, there’s rain!

And that is what we got, we walked pretty much entirely in the rain today, it wasn’t heavy thank goodness but it certainly was wet. We have spray jackets and also ponchos so our upper bodies were dry at least. 🙂

We could’ve had a few reactions to the rain! We could’ve let it dampen our spirits, we could’ve been annoyed, we could’ve seen that it ruined our rain-free record so far. And maybe these thoughts did creep in at times.

But we chose to see it slightly differently; we figured that we couldn’t truly appreciate the sunshine if we don’t experience the alternative!

We flipped it slightly and saw that we were lucky that today, the path we walked was mainly sealed so we weren’t slipping and sliding in mud or rocks! That was more than we could ask for. Obviously we would probably feel differently if the walk was longer and or the rain was heavier but based on what we experienced, we are grateful that if we were to experience rain, that it would be today out of any of our walking days so far!

The rain itself revealed to us our lesson in life: we will have bright days and we will have not-so-bright days. And depending on how we react to them, it can affect how we feel overall about the situation. But it is the “not-so-good” that makes us appreciative of the “good”.

And what is rain? It’s not there to depress us, it’s there to water the earth. How can we expect beautiful lush farms and gorgeous green scenery if there is no rain? We, as humans, need water for survival so we probably shouldn’t be too resentful of rain sometimes!

Let’s not forget that the world is made up of opposites if we didn’t have what we perceive as the “negatives” occasionally, how can we value the positives?

Day 6 – Puente de la Reina to Estella

We left this morning with the sky still dark and the moon looking pretty full to us. As we headed out of Puente de la Reina, we saw many other pilgrims heading off too so it is always comforting to know we are not alone. 

We had a few hills to climb today and the day seemed a little longer than we had hoped for but our spirits remained high.

We can see that the enthusiasm is waning or the fatigue is setting in for others because the chirpy “Olas” and “Buen Caminos” are faint or unenthusiastic or simply non-existent. We are hoping to keep up the positive energy and greet as many people as we can along the way or who pass us.

One thing we are struggling A LOT with is the late dinner. We arrive somewhere mid afternoon and dinner is usually not until after 7.30pm. Firstly, that is really late for us normally but even later because after a day of burning tons and tons of calories, all we want is a good hearty meal. So after a shower, giving our feet a massage, watching TV, catching up on the blog… we end up wandering the streets, which means more walking. It is true what people say, walking is addictive!!

Today, we thought we may have lost our “guidebook” for the walk when we couldn’t find it in the “usual” spots of our backpack. Instead of panicking or becoming upset or frustrated, we just shrugged our shoulders and figured we would survive without it. Similarly, Le lost her sunglasses on Day 3 and it didn’t affect us in any way then either. It dawned on us today that we are “letting go” of possessions. Those things are replaceable. The lesson for life is to have no attachment to material items. Things break, things go missing…. So what?!

It reminds us of the quote:

Attachment is the root of suffering – Buddha

Introducing Our Year-Long Project

This will also act as our “About” page but we felt this was also a fitting first post to introduce our idea. We officially won’t be starting the daily posting until 2015 but in the meantime, we might post and share uplifting or insightful things we find. 

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How often do we really stop, think and talk to ourselves about what was good about each day?

We are currently in Switzerland and we were having dinner one night when we contemplated how we can really change the way we look at things especially after returning home from our Europe trip. That we should reinvent each day and not let them be “just another day”. We so easily let days roll into one and lose ourselves with routine.

Often we get to the end of another year and realise how it has gotten away yet again. We want to be sure that we don’t let our time pass us by, we are choosing to be in the moment and truly be present, not only in body but also in mind.  

This is our project:

Post every day for the year 2015, seeing and sharing only the “brighter” perspective  of something (anything) that happened that day! It’s about focusing on the good and less on the not-so-good. Not letting the good be overshadowed by those things that “ruined” our day. Not any more!!

And at the end, we will look back and see how much of the year we actually remembered because we stopped to think and talk! Depending on the success and our commitment, it may be a project we can continue. 

Life isn’t just about the milestones and big events – it’s about every day! So here is how Le and David “SEES THE DAY” for what it really is.

Here are the simple rules:

1) We post every day about our day from a brighter perspective – there are no limits on what might be posted. 

2) Embrace and capture all those little goodies that sometimes pass us by – there are times when we may get a compliment from a work colleague and we just thank them and that’s the end of it. These are the moments we want to remember rather than the fact that we had a terrible phone call 10 minutes later that “ruined” our day.