When you are flying in a plane 13.5 miles is not very far; the same distance is a little longer when you are driving in a car; but when you are walking it is long way. Although I have run a half marathon and a full marathon in my lifetime, that was over a decade ago and I don't run any more because I really don't like it. So the other day I set my recent personal best of walking 13.5 miles as part of my preparation for El Camino. That trek took a little over 4 hours. That's a long time. So one thing I have learned is that training for my pilgrimage is going to take a long time.
Once in Spain I will be walking about 17 miles every day for a month or so, but that's pretty much all I will be doing other than eating, drinking, sleeping and looking around.
Friends ask about what I do when I walk every day. Well I bought this little iPod, which is about the size of a book of matches, and downloaded a bunch of my Spanish lessons on to it. We bought a house in Mexico a few years back and I am trying to learn Spanish. So I can kill two birds with one stone. Actually my wife did the downloading and she deserves the credit for that.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Over time things change somehow......
When we are very young the issues that worry us are short term issues with fairly immediate outcomes. For example when a baby gets hungry he wants something to eat right away. He is not thinking about how much it is going to cost to fix his carriage, and what he'll do while it is in the shop, etc. He'll be content after he eats, until he gets hungry again.
As you get older the time horizon for problems starts to move further out into the future. So when you are six you worry about whether you can talk your parents into taking you to a movie next weekend. And by the weekend you'll know the answer.
As a teenager you worry about dating, grades, future activities and sports events, how you are going to pay for stuff you want when your parents insist that you pay for one half yourself.
To save time I am really going to generalize from here, but hopefully you get the point..
Then you turn 21 and you have to find a job, a car and a place to live.
Then you get a real job with a future; get married; start a family
Now you take care of, worry about and raise your kids, get along with your in laws, buy a house or a second car
Before you know it you have grandkids. Do you know what grandparents worry about? They worry about not only their kids, but also their grandkids, and great grandkids, and whether they can outlive their money and what happens to everything and everybody when you die. This is all stuff that you never see to fruition because the issues are so permanent in duration and the ultimate outcomes are so far off in the future, that your worrying never seems to end. So unlike the baby who got a brief
period of tranquility after eating, the older you get, the less likely it becomes that you will ever find
any more tranquility in your lifetime.
Unless, however, you can teach yourself to really live in and focus on the moment and not worry about tomorrow, because you really can't do much about it anyway, and the tomorrow you worry about now may never come. And if it does it won't be because you worried about it. Nor will
opportunities arise unless you decide to make your own opportunities and go do stuff.
I can think of a dozen reasons why walking 500 miles alone in Spain may not be a good idea for me. Or I can just go do it and see what comes. But, by trying this, I will definitely be assured of experiencing a different series of life experiences than I would have experienced if I had just stayed
home worrying about stuff while I worked out on the treadmill.
As you get older the time horizon for problems starts to move further out into the future. So when you are six you worry about whether you can talk your parents into taking you to a movie next weekend. And by the weekend you'll know the answer.
As a teenager you worry about dating, grades, future activities and sports events, how you are going to pay for stuff you want when your parents insist that you pay for one half yourself.
To save time I am really going to generalize from here, but hopefully you get the point..
Then you turn 21 and you have to find a job, a car and a place to live.
Then you get a real job with a future; get married; start a family
Now you take care of, worry about and raise your kids, get along with your in laws, buy a house or a second car
Before you know it you have grandkids. Do you know what grandparents worry about? They worry about not only their kids, but also their grandkids, and great grandkids, and whether they can outlive their money and what happens to everything and everybody when you die. This is all stuff that you never see to fruition because the issues are so permanent in duration and the ultimate outcomes are so far off in the future, that your worrying never seems to end. So unlike the baby who got a brief
period of tranquility after eating, the older you get, the less likely it becomes that you will ever find
any more tranquility in your lifetime.
Unless, however, you can teach yourself to really live in and focus on the moment and not worry about tomorrow, because you really can't do much about it anyway, and the tomorrow you worry about now may never come. And if it does it won't be because you worried about it. Nor will
opportunities arise unless you decide to make your own opportunities and go do stuff.
I can think of a dozen reasons why walking 500 miles alone in Spain may not be a good idea for me. Or I can just go do it and see what comes. But, by trying this, I will definitely be assured of experiencing a different series of life experiences than I would have experienced if I had just stayed
home worrying about stuff while I worked out on the treadmill.
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