Day 089m: Diving into Discipline … (July 12, 2019)
I eventually made it to the small dusty town of Itera de la Vega, where I reconnected with fellow pilgrim Erin (who I had first met and with whom I had shared a lovely dinner back in the hostel at Ages). She was just finishing up her lunch when I arrived and I sat with her awhile and talked warmly & encouragingly about the trials & tribulations of walking The Way (specifically the hot & dusty desolation that was the Maseta). She eventually rose to continue her walk and I remained behind to use the restroom and get some water. Before departing myself I noticed that she had left two pieces of fresh bread on the table where we had been sitting; bread that was very tempting at the time (I was pretty hungry), and yet also bread that had not been openly offered* – and so it became bread that was willingly left behind …
“The only important kind of freedom combines attention, awareness, humility, and discipline — being able to repeatedly deny one’s own petty desires for comfort or convenience, and being willing to boldly care about other beings — to sacrifice for them, over and over, in a cascading deluge of little unsexy & often unnoticed ways … The sense of dignity grows with each successive choice to say No to oneself, and the sense of integrity expands with each additional decision to say Yes to others … And so it is that the height of a one’s success can be gauged by his or her devoutness of self-mastery; his or her courage to face personal fears, his or her willingness to abandon personal desires, and of course his or her bravery in reaching out to give and serve and care.” ~ via David Foster Wallace, Abraham J. Heschel, and Leonardo da Vinci
*Part of the power of my walk was not only refusing to accept or earn or use any money, and not only refusing to ever ask for food along the way, but also vowing to avoid both the hoarding of food that was offered and the scrounging of food that had been discarded. Either I was going to be fed by the unsolicited kindness of those I encountered, or I was not going to be fed at all.
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