Dear Caminoheads,

Continuing with the topic of questions, here is another majestic post by Ryck, our Bureau Chief. Pour a glass of wine, or Scotch, and just enjoy…

 

At what point do we realize the true value of time? I am not referring to the value of time regarding working on a job, or how long you are awake or asleep, I mean the value of time as if it were sand in an hourglass and you can visualize the micro-grains of sand funneling non-stop from the top of the glass to the bottom. When you realized that the grains can never flow from the bottom to the top again, what remains at the top of the glass is what is left, and none of us truly knows how many grains are left. Only an estimation at best.

-How old were you when you realized this?

-Did it change any aspect of your life?

-Did you prioritize your personal grains of sand as they continued to flow towards the bottom, or was it irrelevant? Although, I think, everything is relevant. I almost think the word “irrelevant” is, well, IRRELEVANT…an oxymoron because one thing affects another.

 

-If I could change anything in my past, would I place less emphasis on those things that would matter not at all in the end? Oh, and then, what is the end? Or is there an end?

 

I have so many questions, but I know that no one can answer them for me, only the hourglass itself will reveal the answers when it determines.

 

Now, for a goal, I do know how that works…whatever the goal. I imagine it as I am hiking up a mountain with my big walking stick. At the beginning of hiking the mountain, I look up at it. “Damn that’s far” I will say to myself. Then I will look down at my feet as they slowly move one foot after the other. I can see the earth under my feet moving at the same pace and hear the crunch of the shoes as they hit each step, you know, the best sounds on the Camino as you crunch along, step by step by step…..”crunch…crunch…crunch”…..

As I continue to look at my feet, then around the fields or path, occasionally I will look back up to the mountain and the mountain gets ever so slightly smaller. Then I look down again, crunch, crunch…. then occasionally up at the mountain, the goal becomes within my reach, and suddenly it is possible. As I get closer to the mountain top I think of how many others had quit

or veered off onto another, simpler path with a smaller peak. Maybe these are people from my life, some that left me too early, some that I left not soon enough….some that lost their way.

Finally, I reach that damn mountain top and I look over the valley and the valley is big.

There are many people down in that valley and they are looking up at the mountain top I am now on and they are thinking, “Damn, that is a big mountain”. Some veer off, some will leave too soon, a few will keep looking at their feet as they crunch along, earth moving beneath their feet, occasionally looking up at the mountain top.

 

At the top of the mountain top there very well may be an hourglass, and the hourglass may now be either completely empty as we have reached the goal, or perhaps, it is completely full again…….But, we will not know until we reach that mountain top.

Maybe, even, at the top of that mountain, everyone throughout our whole life is there, and they say, “We watched you walking from all of the way down in that valley. We watched you almost veer off the path, then you got back on track, but now, you are here with us”.

 

Cheers:

Ryck