Walked: 25.86Km
A strange day today. What begun as a meditation about the meaning of kindness took me into a very dark place. I reminisced old wounds from childhood into adolescence. I noticed that—in order to be accepted—I repressed who I truly am, I took abuse, I allowed myself to be humiliated. In the name of belonging I took the lowest spot within the lowest caste.
At some point I realized they were all bozos. I was better off on my own. I became a willing outcast. A loner. An exile. This is the true origin of my aloneness. I do not trust the other not to try to dominate, outsmart or abuse me. The few (excellent) friends that I have do not play these games.
I debate with myself whether I should provide some examples. It is painful enough to lick your wounds in private. Now imagine in public.
The reason I attempted to meditate on kindness was because today is the end of my solitary walks. The lonely Catalan Way joins the social French Way. I'll see groups of people who have become friends effortlessly, and I'll peek from the outside, kinda wanting to join in but also afraid of doing so. I'll sit down with my laptop to type my logs, pretending to not care about them.
In the end I cut a deal with myself: I will make an honest attempt at connecting with the other, from this very different person that I am now, not shaping myself into someone they can like, as I usually do. I won't be aloof, distant, reserved and mysterious, which is what I usually project.
If this doesn't work out for me, once I reach Pamplona I will stay a couple of days with one of these excellent friends and then I will head back to Barcelona to continue my spiritual journey, this time through personal programming/design work.
If this does work out for me, well, things will naturally flow from there.
And I must not be distracted by pretty women. I must act as if everyone were a pretty woman, so to speak.
When I reached the albergue today at Santa Cilia there wasn't the crowd I expected. There was only a guy resting on his bed. I said hello. He grunted back. I took a deep breath. "Hey, my name is Mark, what's yours? Nice to meet you. Where did you start walking?".