“Maybe when we no longer know what to do, we have arrived at our real work and when we do not know which way to go, we have started our real journey.” ~ Wendell Berry
I was watching TV one night when something on the screen made me put everything aside and keep quiet. It is a scene where the main character, a man who loves his daughter completely, can not change what is happening to her. So he went out into the wilderness as a prayer.
I put the remote on and did not take it back. Not because what he did was foreign to me, but because it was deep in my bones. I have done this all my life without ever having a name for it.
The first was in my twenties. I just met a woman I was going to marry and I still marry today. She lived in an apartment on the Sawgrass Expressway, about seven or eight miles from where I was living at the time.
I can drive. I have a car. But I wanted to meet her, and that day something in my body had to travel on foot.
I walked up University Drive and continued to walk past the supermarkets and traffic lights and onto the highway. By the time I got to the door, my feet were tired and my clothes were wet. But I’m happy.
I pushed myself to endure on the road there. She deserves that. Somewhere along the way I learned that tenderness often has to move through the body before it can reach another person.
My parents lived about five miles, and I covered the land by foot many times more than I could say. Walking one step at a time through the corners and backyards where I grew up doing something to my situation. When I got there I was fully present and grateful for the gifts I wanted to see them.
Sometimes the person I am heading to is my son, who has worn the number five in sports since he was too young to explain why. When I found out that Brooks Robinson, the third member of the Hall of Fame, whom I admire for his talent and generosity, also wore that number, I walked many miles to the baseball card store and back. I want my son to know that his number is worn by someone who looks and feels right on his journey.
There was a time when I was so bored with work that I did not know what to do, I walked fourteen miles to the beach. I did not tell anyone. I just kept going until the end of the ocean road was in front of me and the tension dropped from my shoulders.
That’s what these long walks have always been for me. How to transfer something from the inside to the outside. The way of talking to my whole body that this challenge, person or time is important enough to be honored.
A few years ago, my daughter was struggling. My wife and I have tried everything we can think of to support her. But I was left to sit with that feeling of despair, every parent knows where you would trade a place with your child if you could.
Sometimes all you can do is fall in love with someone from a distance and hopefully reach them. I did everything else I could think of and came empty-handed. So I put on my sneakers and walked west.
I walked through the bus stop and the plaza through the vacant land where the city began to recede, crossing the end of the sidewalk, and the land became quiet. It’s cold for South Florida, probably in her late forties, but I kept going. I went until the last gas station was behind me and there was nothing in front of me except space.
I stopped at the fence that marked the beginning of the Everglades. The grass expands across the sky, and the sky is endless. Nothing out there knew my name or cared about what I was worried about.
My leg hurts. My lungs worked hard. I was exhausted myself to get there.
Standing on the edge of the wilderness, I allowed myself to wish her well in the most brutal and defenseless way I could control. I stood there for a long time. Then I returned home.
By the time I got back, the temperature had dropped to thirty. I went to the backyard and into the pool and the cold hit me like a wall. I was in that water and thinking about her all the time.
It is a small act and may be foolish. But it felt like the real thing I could do.
I do not know if it helped her or not, even though she did better than she is now. I will not pretend that roads or cold water have anything to do with it. But I think I now understand what I have been doing there for years.
When love goes deep enough, it builds up in you and it has to move. Some talk to friends, some write and some press until things get better. I pushed myself in the direction I loved until I was exhausted.
I have learned that no matter how much we want to, we can not always change things for our loved ones. Something about acceptance that takes time and distance. Walking is how I work through things I can not handle so I can be more fully able and based on what I care about.
I think the scene on TV that night hit me hard because I did what the guy did long before I saw him do it on screen. Neither of us had a better choice, neither did we need a choice. He went out into the wilderness for his daughter, and I walked to the edge of the Everglades for me.
We do not always have the answers, but we do have love and we find ways to keep expressing ourselves.
I think that is probably the most crowded thing out there.
About Daniel H. Shapiro
Dr. Daniel H. Shapiro is a speaker, author and mentor. He is obsessed with human relationships and the things we take with us. For more information on his book 5 Practices of TrainersOr his guidance and speech services, please check yourinherentgoodness.com.
