When we arrived last night to Roncesvalles, our bodies ached in the most unimaginable ways. We had the quickest pilgrim dinner ever and wanted to hit the hay straight away. It was a soreness that we cannot describe – we felt like we had our energy sucked out of us, our limbs didn’t want to cooperate with us and we felt bruised and battered.
So we woke this morning expecting to feel sore and sorry for ourselves. But we didn’t. We were on the road by 7.15 knowing that today was meant to be another tough day.
We had a great start, motoring along with only slight ascents and just feeling like we were powering through the day until…. we were about 7km or so out.
Frustration, exhaustion, anger began to set in. Normally 7km back home would take us about 1.5 hours to walk but for some reason.. it felt like time was getting on but we weren’t covering any distance. The sun was unforgiving today. And there was little shade towards the end. Each step drained a little more water and energy from us.
To be fair, it probably was our bodies coping with so much walking in just two days. And the biggest tease is ALWAYS thinking that we are getting closer, but we just never seem to get there. There are occasional road signs telling us how much further we have to go and these signs don’t come often but when they do, they always give us a glimmer of hope. False HOPE every time today.
So what did we learn today? We found the secret to walking up those hills…. If we looked at just ahead of our feet, rather than up to the peak, we were able to power up those hills and before we knew it, we were there – at the top! We think the life lesson from that is: we should stop looking so much at the future and fearing or worrying about what is there – don’t let our minds predict or dictate how we should feel now about what we don’t know lies ahead. We need to look at where we are going now and in due course, what lies ahead will arrive when it does! We could really compare the difference between climbing hills yesterday (without this mentality) VS today (with this mentality). Every hill yesterday looked daunting because we kept looking up at how much further… yet today, we were just so surprised to have conquered those hills so easily in comparison. Our first reminder, to live in the NOW!
After today, we are grateful to have human contact in our lives. Just being able to speak and communicate and befriend people… whether it be our families, friends or complete strangers. We should reach out to people, if they need our help, they can take it. If they don’t need our help, it was good for them to know we care!
"Sees" the Day 