Over the last couple of weeks, many of my friends have offered to reach out to their friends and family to host and feed me along this journey through Quebec. I am just so grateful for them. However, I opted not to accept any beds for the last eleven days, and I’ll try to explain why.
For the first two weeks of this journey, I didn’t really feel committed to this walk. It was something that has been sitting on my to do list since I was a boy and I just wanted to get it done so I could move on with my life.
It’s true that I was still putting in the kilometers each day and working hard to build momentum, but there’s a big difference between showing up for work and being committed to one’s work. It’s a mental and spiritual difference. Funny, my soccer coach for the military national team once told me that in a breakfast meal of bacon and eggs, the chicken is showing up for work, but the pig is committed.
The best way I knew of to get my head in the game, from previous experience, was to get myself dirty, filthy even, to become an unshaven ragamuffin, to become as comfortable with feeling uncomfortable as I could be, by walking all day and into the evening, sleeping in the forest, being cold and wet and sore and sometimes miserable.
And I knew by doing this, it would change my state of mind. It always has worked in the past when I’ve taken on other challenging physical endeavours. It also worked for me all through my military career. The more difficult the circumstances, the tougher I became – physically, mentally, spiritually – for the mission ahead.
And so it has worked again.
I feel now like I am fully committed to this walk. Despite the physical strain I’m putting on my body, this trek is much more of a mental and spiritual game than one might think. And now, after those eleven days of being filthy, I feel like my head and heart are truly in this.
