Aretxalde

Philosophical reflection warning!

Wondering about joy.

Perhaps joy is after all there for the seeking and the seeing, or the letting be, the receiving ... is there a choice to be made in my attitude? In openness to what is (around me, and inside me) (which may not be at all the same as what I wish it would be), or in readiness to accept who and what presents itself to my (rather little) field of attention?
It becomes apparent that there probably is a choice.
I have a lifelong tendency to melancholy. What if I were to not (/no longer) let this define me, but instead just let it be there, alongside, say, this joy I wonder about; both holding hands, even, and walking together along the way?
I come back to two words - attention and intention - which have become important to me in my spiritual practice in recent years.
It helped me today to stop occasionally in order to pay attention to something in particular - the silence, the birdsong, a fern, a stream, the mother pony with her twin foals, the local woman and man in conversation, a farmhouse, a fellow walker. And to let the loveliness of whatever it was touch me. There is in fact so much loveliness!
A couple of days ago I wrote about not feeling anything much apart from frustration at not feeling much. In this period, then, let me hold this intention: to practice giving things a bit more of a chance to enter into my awareness, and in that way give joy some space to enter in as well.
I wish for this, to be sure. Verdaderamente.

Came across our first goodie table today, such as seen in the movies about the Camino! The lady was obviously looking out for passing trade, and hauled her laden table out to the front of her drive whenever someone approached. Such a delicious 'chocolate caliente', and a tiny pintxos of quince membrillo on top of local cheese with walnuts. It's fabulous when people chatter away unselfconsciously in Spanish and without regard to my understanding! Best way to learn.

Some of the route goes through forests in, erm, active management; that is to say where there are men chainsawing branches and heavy machinery dragging bare trunks up the footpaths, creating ugly deep trenches of slippery mud. Just glad it wasn't raining heavily today.

Belgian lads with 6 weeks of walking behind them already, and another 6 ahead, carrying tents and everything in huge packs.
Martin from Lancashire with such a strong Hampshire accent I had to tune my ears in really carefully, and another British man from Sussex walking at great speed.
Kyesoo limping now with blisters.Read more