join the bookworm club.
I'm just done with 'The Places in Between' by Rory Stewart. Rory's a Scottish man who walked across Afghanistan in January 2002. He survived the walk with his knowledge of the local culture, experience built walking through Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal and simple hospitality of the locals. Many who sheltered and gave him food were poor and their homes were in various states of neglect due to the years of conflicts and the subsequent war. Yet never once did the hospitality offered come with the request of reward. There's hope for the world yet.
That aside, the pure beauty, the simplicity of his walk is something that sings to me. Deep down inside all of us, I'm sure many want to leave it all behind and just blaze a trail of our own desires. I would love to do nothing more than to cycle through the world. But I lack the guts. It's almost as though there's an inbuilt mechanism programmed to tell me I have too many things to worry and to do. It's so self-contradictory. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with life as it is, but as always, we're always looking for more. Maybe when we've really satisfied ourselves with that one journey, we can put it as clearly as Rory did.
'Almost every morning, (as I began the day's walk) regrets and anxieties would run through my mind like a cheap tune- often repeated, revealing nothing. But as I kept moving, no thoughts came. Instead I became aware of the landscape as I once had in the Indian Himalayas. Every element around me seemed sharper, the colours more intense. I stared, expecting the effects to fade, but the objects only continued to develop in reality and presence. I was suddenly afraid, uncertain I could sustain this vision.
This moment was new to me. I had not dreamed or imagined it before. Yet I recognized it. I felt that I was as I was in this place, and that I had known it before. This was the last day of my walk. To feel in these final hours, after months of frustrations, an unexplained completion seemed too neat. But the recognition was immediate and incontrovertible. I had no words for it. Now, writing, I am tempted to say that I felt the world had been given as a gift uniquely to me and also equally to each person alone. I had completed walking and could go home.'
That aside, the pure beauty, the simplicity of his walk is something that sings to me. Deep down inside all of us, I'm sure many want to leave it all behind and just blaze a trail of our own desires. I would love to do nothing more than to cycle through the world. But I lack the guts. It's almost as though there's an inbuilt mechanism programmed to tell me I have too many things to worry and to do. It's so self-contradictory. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with life as it is, but as always, we're always looking for more. Maybe when we've really satisfied ourselves with that one journey, we can put it as clearly as Rory did.
'Almost every morning, (as I began the day's walk) regrets and anxieties would run through my mind like a cheap tune- often repeated, revealing nothing. But as I kept moving, no thoughts came. Instead I became aware of the landscape as I once had in the Indian Himalayas. Every element around me seemed sharper, the colours more intense. I stared, expecting the effects to fade, but the objects only continued to develop in reality and presence. I was suddenly afraid, uncertain I could sustain this vision.
This moment was new to me. I had not dreamed or imagined it before. Yet I recognized it. I felt that I was as I was in this place, and that I had known it before. This was the last day of my walk. To feel in these final hours, after months of frustrations, an unexplained completion seemed too neat. But the recognition was immediate and incontrovertible. I had no words for it. Now, writing, I am tempted to say that I felt the world had been given as a gift uniquely to me and also equally to each person alone. I had completed walking and could go home.'
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home