The Lesson Service Handed Me Before the First Step
A stopped train, a heatwave, and the lesson I am bringing onto the Camino.
My TGV is stopped on a track in the middle of the French countryside, and this is the first time in days I have been still.
We are eight days into a heatwave gripping much of Europe, over 90F / 32C, and everyone is on edge and dragging, myself included.
If your own week refuses to behave, if the calm you planned keeps getting interrupted by things that actually matter, you already know this terrain. The week I had set aside for a quiet departure to the Camino de Santiago went elsewhere. An electrical problem I could not ignore. A stretch of caregiving for someone who matters to me and needed me close. Neither was planned. Both were worth every hour they asked of me, and I would choose them again without hesitation.
Step four of my Rule of Life is to hold space for service. This week those words stopped being a phrase and became two choices with real cost, made gladly. One was a caregiving need for someone whose wellbeing was worth far more than my tidy schedule. The other was an electrical problem that was not only mine to solve, a safety issue that could have put others at risk had I left it for later. Both were right. What they revealed together was humbling. There is a gap between what I commit to, what I believe I can finish, and what a single week can actually hold.
I am walking into the Camino with that gap held open rather than closed. Maybe the path is not asking me to do more. Maybe it is asking me to be honest about what is mine to carry.
What do you think?
It's ironic that I wake to this piece from you when the past 2 days I've worried about you pushing yourself too hard out on the camino. Be gentle with yourself, dear friend. Life is a series of interruptions, I've found, rarely the plans I have made.