Moving beyond comfort, through the body, toward clarity.
Nobody lies down in the dust by choice. Fifty kilometres through the Spanish semi-desert: no shade, no water, no other soul in sight. After forty kilometres, every step hurts. I lie down in the dust because there is nowhere else.
In moments like that, you don’t think much. You don’t plan, you don’t analyse, you don’t avoid anything. You’re simply there.
In ordinary life, I am constantly building myself up. Moving forward, making a good impression, taking the right decisions. It costs energy. A constant managing of my own image, my own performance, my own sense of control.
Physical exhaustion puts an end to all that, simply because there is no energy left for the managing. What remains is smaller. Quieter. More real.
I call it my true self. Not the self with plans and things to prove. The one underneath. The one that needs no evidence.
In Latvia, walking the Baltic coast, I sank into the sand with every step. The beach was beautiful and, at the same time, a kind of torment. Eventually the question came, the one that always comes: why am I putting myself through this?
No answer arrived.
Because the question itself was wrong. It came from the part of me that wants to explain everything, control everything. When that part is exhausted, it stops asking. And then it goes quiet.
In that quiet I sometimes feel something I can only describe as: I am part of something. The landscape, the wind, the next step.
In early June, I’ll be climbing the Brocken hill with a small group. Two days, forty kilometres, several hundred metres of ascent. Northern Germany’s highest peak.
I’m not offering this because exhaustion is the goal. But because I’ve learnt what waits on the other side of it. A self that makes less noise. Thoughts that are clearer. A feeling of being grounded, not through rest, but through effort.
The early bird period closes this weekend. If you’d like to join, the link is here.
But even if you won’t be coming: perhaps you already know this moment. A moment when the noise stopped and you were simply there. Where were you?
Buen Camino,
Alexander
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