“I’ve been running now so long I’m scared I've forgotten how to stand.”
- Frank Turner - The Way I Tend to Be
All my life I had this fear of standing still, of motionlessness and stagnation.
My constant need to move has driven me to do a lot of amazing things but it also sometimes gets in the way of being present and just enjoying the moment. It hampers my ability to truly take in the staggering beauty of the world around me and appreciate the people with whom I’m sharing it.
I am still figuring out how to stay more grounded and have to constantly remind myself not to let my mind run off into the future or get stuck in the past.
One thing that has helped me tremendously to start to develop this skill has been my time traveling and backpacking.
As most things though, it is a skill that takes constant practice and effort and I still let myself get carried away into meticulously trying to plan for a future that is too far removed to be predicted and into fruitlessly attempting to rectify the past. Whenever I catch myself at it I try to get myself back to the moment by focusing on what is instead of what could be or was.
When I first decided to go traveling I aspired to not overplan just to then immediately proceed to do just that. Thankfully I didn’t book anything too far in advance so I could just freestyle it as soon as I got comfortable with it, which in fairness happened quite quickly.
The freedom of just going day by day and not worrying about the next steps is something that's hard to recreate in everyday life and is a luxury I am incredibly happy to have been able to experience.
Traveling opened my mind in so many different ways and freed me from trying to stick to a structure that was more imposed by the expectations of others than by myself.
Long distance hikes especially help me to slow down and stay in the here and now.
The slow pace and simplicity of it. The peace and quiet and the focus on putting one step in front of the other. After a while all I think about is where I aim to sleep and what and when I eat. Everything else is optional.
My thoughts still wander but they rarely overwhelm me like they tend to do in everyday life.
This year, me and a friend embarked on another prolonged hiking adventure. The GR20 in Corsica. 180km (110 miles), 12.000m of elevation gain and a whole lot of climbing along the way. Most of the trail is very technical, which doesn’t leave too much space for your mind to wander. It was hot and steep and very, very challenging, both mentally and physically. There were equal amounts of raucous laughter and hysterical ugly crying. This trail took everything out of me but the views, the company and the accomplishments filled me back up and added some more on top.
I slowed down and after a fairly stressful stretch at work, finally gave me space to breathe again. It pushed me to my limits and at the same time proved to me what I am capable of.
There are a few things I would do differently if I were to do it again. The main one being to slow down significantly. We were on a fairly tight schedule with only 13 days to finish the trail, which is usually done in 15 days. That meant that we had to rush through the southern section and couldn’t really enjoy it fully as we were pushing for miles.
I would have liked to take more time, take more and longer breaks and have more time to forge deeper connections with our fellow hikers.
The world around us has gotten so fast that it is easy to lose yourself in it. The way we travel from one place to another, the constant input of information and this incessant desire to participate in it sometimes feels like it's just way too much. Our brains just weren’t built for it.
We were not made to move this quickly and take in information at such a high velocity.
So I, for one, have decided to slow down whenever I can. To get out into the world and take it in at my own pace.
Comments