We Are All Pilgrims
Friends!
So many reached out after last week's post on being right or being together. It's a difficult topic, but like most important conversations, they start with an open mind and a commitment to our shared human experience.
This week I am reflecting on perhaps something entirely different: traveling. This week marked the first time we flew and attended regular meetings and dinners with both colleagues and family in a very long time. It felt both really good and really weird.
But it got me thinking about traveling. What is traveling? Why are we traveling? And as I was contemplating this, almost serendipitously, the wonderful poet, David Whyte, entered my consciousness yet again via his writing Pilgrim in the incredible book Consolations.
“In that perspective it might be that faith, reliability, responsibility and being true to something unspeakable are possible even if we are travelers, and that we are made better, more faithful companions, and indeed pilgrims on the astonishing, never to be repeated journey by combining the precious memory of the then with the astonishing, but taken for granted experience of the now, and both with the unbelievable, and hardly possible just about to happen.””
I have written about David before, primarily in my post titled Poetry Emotion. I have been inspired by his work for well over two decades. I find his characterization of his work as the "conversational nature of reality" to be such a rich description of the beautiful dance that we are all engaged in and that makes up life.
I think most people think about traveling as something we do to get somewhere, to have a different experience, and to break out of our routine. It could be discovering new cultures, meeting new people, tasting new foods, learning new skills, or just about anything we’d like to experience. Or, simply and perhaps most commonly, to “get away” as a form of recovery and relaxation (i.e. vacation which comes from Latin and means "free from duty"). It’s all about locomotion, rather than devotion.
Pilgrimage is a different type of travel. Pilgrims hit the road seeking transformation. It’s a journey where the traveler explicitly wishes to expand his or her universe in manifest ways. It is not accidental. It requires perhaps less financial resources than a vacation, but far more emotional reserves. It taps into a deep commitment to the process of self-renewal, guided by virtues such as humility and vulnerability and less by itineraries and sightseeing. The duration can also be much longer than most travels.
I haven’t thought about the distinction between traveling and pilgrimage ever, really. Obviously, America wouldn't exist as we know it if it wasn't for pilgrims – we mostly hear the word in relation to Thanksgiving. But my reason for riffing on it this week revolves around the idea that traveling does change us. Whether it is our intention or not. And since the inspiration behind this newsletter series is to "elevate" our conversation and thereby help each other to be more mindful in our intentions, I thought this was a worthwhile distinction to double-click on. What if we incorporated a pilgrim’s attitude into more of our travel? Would we be better for it?
Metaphorically speaking, life is a journey and we either approach that journey as pilgrims or as regular travelers. It’s a choice – a choice in attitude. A traveler might have certain expectations, and when those are not met, disappointment arrives. A pilgrim has only the expectation to grow from whatever happens, and therefore, there is no disappointment, only growth.
Consider the well-known Serenity Prayer:
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
A significant contributor to anxiety, stress, and unhappiness is the belief that we can control more things than we can. While it is true that there are many things we can control, it’s equally true that we have to accept all the things we cannot. And knowing the difference is key to a happy life.
Being open-minded and approaching life with curiosity is a great attitude to have. The wisest and smartest people I know also are the most curious. Of course, some people also seem to have more luck than others, but in reality, they are often just people who are more open to what happens to them. It is tied up in the attitude of gratitude – the ability to step back and recognize there are lessons to be learned in experiences good and bad. If you are closed, you often miss the chances given to you because you simply don’t recognize them as opportunities.
As most of us are now getting back to more traveling, I am going to make an effort to approaching traveling with the mindset of a pilgrim, where the journey is the destination and the destination is a more peaceful and joyful existence.
Here are a few sources of inspiration this week:
David Whyte's recent first and second conversation with Sam Harris, as well as his website and his beautiful collection of work called Consolations
I found Pope Francis' article to be quite inspiring. Particularly the last part and how the doctors and caregivers acted as "antibodies to the virus of indifference."
Another great post by Angela Duckworth around reserving judgment. Another essential attitude of the pilgrim!
As a Wildcat and fan of Northwestern, I applauded this post by President of the University, Morton Shapiro, and Lawrence Dumas, also a Professor at Northwestern University. Beliefs are not facts, and we have to help ourselves towards a more decent, open, and collaborative public discourse.
Lastly, I am reading Colin Mayer's important book on capitalism called Prosperity. Here is a short summary of his take in Fortune. You all know this is the purpose of my own career. To help broaden, lengthen, and strengthen the positive impact of business. We have much work to do, and I will for sure devote more newsletters in the future that important task.
The choices we make every day define the course of our lives. As the years pass, it becomes clear just how easy it is to live your life without intentionality and to feel like the life you have lived is something that just happened to you, not the life you chose for yourself. Therefore intentions really matter. If you don't know where and why you are going, the choices you make matter less. By making your intentions clearer, the choices you make matter more. And therefore, YOU matter more. How good is that?
Traveling, like so many of life's activities, is less about where we are going and more about who we are becoming.
See you out there fellow pilgrims!
