Day 103l: Home again, HOME again … (July 26, 2019)
I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to smoothly remain in Finisterre that night, and yet resolved myself to at the very least stopping by all the hostels that Simone had mentioned before leaving town. And yet as it turned out, the very first stop on his list proved to be the last & only stop I needed to make. Yes, the young & smiley hospitalero/a crew at Albergue do Sol e da Lua was extremely skeptical of me when I first stopped by and told them my Walk, and more than few of them announced outright that they were literally afraid of what the hostel owner would say to them if they allowed me to remain there that night. I informer them that no stress needed to be felt, and that I would flow on without incident if they didn’t wish to support my Journey &/or enjoy my presence. To their credit, they hemmed and hawed mightily over this (from my perspective immensely amusing – and actually non-existent) conundrum – doing so loudly enough for the rest of the pilgrims present to become aware of the drama that was unfolding, and then ultimately just long enough for one of the same (Sarita, pictured below) to generously offer to pay for my night’s stay …
“We all encounter people over the course of our lives who are less than loving &/or not fully generous, and it is tempting indeed to be critical or condemnatory of the same. And yet we would all do well to remember that all of us at various times in our own lives believed true things for faulty reasons or false things for sound reasons – that all of us at various times have refused to be courageously kind; rejecting strangers or insulting enemies or abandoning those in real need. And so we would do just as well to walk a bit more humbly through life today – remembering that whatever we think we know about the ones we meet along the way, and no matter whether we’re ultimately right or wrong about their being or intentions, is always at least slightly flawed – and that as such we would do well to err on the side of seeing their better side; that we would all do quite well indeed to err on the side of being giving and caring and kind.” ~ inspired by Alan Jacobs
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