“Who am I? Where have I been, and where am I going?”
Carl Sandburg
I have been cleared to walk outdoors again, for very modest amounts. This is a milestone and a celebration, because I have spent most of the summer “on the bench,” recovering from a knee fracture.
At the beginning of my recovery, I mentioned that it felt like this injury and the subsequent healing process was a “factory reset”, meant to bring me back to my “original condition.” At the time, I didn’t really understand what that might mean, but it felt true of my experience.
Like most things that might look like an unwanted or negative experience at first, this injury and recovery have had their gifts for me. The process has been teaching me what it means to be a pilgrim; not just a pilgrim on a pilgrimage, but a pilgrim of life.
The recovery has been teaching me how I want to live my life, during the next phase of my life journey.
I am not defined by my doing, however much it felt that way in the first couple of weeks of recovery.
I am defined by what life gives me and what I create with that raw material.
Over the last few weeks of recovery, I’ve been exploring what being a pilgrim means, and I’ve been reflecting on that in my blog posts.
It seems highly ironic that the period when I could not walk has taught me more about being a pilgrim than the first 8 weeks when I was walking.
These are the things that I’ve noticed, so far, about being a pilgrim:
Pilgrims get stopped.
Pilgrims get detoured.
And:
- They carry only the essentials.
- They find their own rhythm.
- They trust their path.
- They are mindful as they walk.
- They are open and receptive, and they listen.
- They meet life with creativity.
I don’t have any of these qualities embodied or integrated into my life as habitual practices or ways of being, but I am much more conscious of them than I was when I was first injured.
I aspire to live my life in the spirit of being a pilgrim, one who is all of these things.
I want to be one who meets what life gives me with a creative response.
How do you want to live your life?
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