The Big Ocean, The Solitude & The Big Thanks

Guys, Do you know where I am right now?
Yes. I am in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


First of all:
I am amazed.
There are several reasons for being amazed, but there is one that I want to mention at the very beginning:

Thank you.

Thqnk you a lot.

Thank you from here to Santiago and back to Munich and up into deep space and

Thank you with each small piece of my soul.

Thanks, friends.

I have received a LOT of help from some extremely, extremely generous people since I asked for financial help some days (weeks?) ago. I am extremely touched, I have tears in my eyes right now. I hope I can give back the favor to all you when you need it and also when you don't need it, but I can do it for you.

I'd like to tell you something that makes these donations even more magical.

There are two feelings that in all languages I know are described by the same word:
Solitude.

In my eyes, this is a huge mistake. You don't need to be a master of Zen to recognize that there are two kinds of solitude, the good and the bad one.

The good one is what I came here to search for. You are alone, in the middle of nature or wherever, you are a part of something ancient, omnipresent, you don't need words to communicate with the World. You communicate with your only existence. Good solitude lies somewhere between peace and happiness.

But bad solitude is one of the worst things that can happen to you. As thinking and conscient beings, it is more important to us how we think that things are than how things really are. Some people cannot go into the sea because the big waves scare the hell out of them: And some other people don't only go into the waves, they actually take a Surf board with them and play with them. There are people that work several hours a day in a mine, and others that are claustrophobic. People that run scared when they see a spider and people who eat spiders. People rich as kings that seem to be always unhappy and poor people that walk smiling through life.

And there are people that are loney and people that feel lonely.

It doesn't matter how reality is, it depends only how it looks to you.

The other day at Saint-Jean-Pied de Port I met an american girl of my age. She had arrived with a friend the day before to start the Way, and after a chain of very bad coincidences she found herself alone, without bank card or money (it was national day in the US, so there was no chance of calling there and solving the problems), and without knowing the language of a foreign country. And without the person she had made the way there with. She was really scared and worse than that, she was feeling really, really lonely. No one around that could help her. That's the way she was feeling.

To my eyes, she was already saved:
The people of the refuge had offered her an extra free night and food, she had become money from me and some other people, some 55 € in total, more than enough for surviving good some days, calling home, getting money or a bank card or whatever and continue the Way. The people sourrounding her were willing to help her, the refuge's guardians would for sure allow her to stay some more nights or arrange some solution, there were not many but some people like me that could serve as translators, and well... In some days everything would have been OK. But she was terribly lonely.

At the beginning, since I have had quite often the feeling of "shit, nothing is working, I want to go home, I'm tired, I'm lost, please help", I tried to explain her my best self-boosting arguments, the ways that allow me to continue when there is no more energy left.

I wanted to help her to continue, which is what I needed. To continue to the very end.

You see, it is often difficult to hear what people really need and not to confuse the needs of other's with our own needs projected in them.

For I was telling her: "Look, you have money, you have food and a dry bed, you have friends, this is going to work out, just hold on some more time and then you will be able to continue to Santiago"

But all she wanted was to escape her bad solitude. She wanted to go home, she wanted to talk to someone that felt familiar. I tried everything, and you know what helped her, what made her collapse and cry and see the light at the end of the tunnel and say thank you thank you thank you?

It was going to a shop, buying a phone card and calling her family in the US. Talking to them. She started crying and let all her pain out at the very moment that she heard a known voice. That was all she needed to boost her hope.

You see, the bad solitude.


Well, the price of lots of good solitude is, at some point, the bad solitude. Everyone has different needs of good solitude, and even the fanatics like me that go into a 4-month long walk through the most desert roads they can find and climb up mad mountains just to sit at their top and feel their body full of electricity and energy come to a point where they feel lonely.

Remember I said the other day that I wanted to talk about the dark sides of the Way?

In the middle of the Way, at Cordes-sur-Ciel (Cordes over the sky, ain't that a wonderful name for a town?), a pelgrim gave me his tent because he didn't wanted to carry it anymore. I loved that. I was hoping for that moment! A tent!! Full freedom!!!

Well, to my surprise, the first night in my tent was really sad. I was feeling horribly lonely. I was exhausted, it was windy and going to rain, I didn't know if the tent wouls stand it, it was cold. My mind was full of memories of much much warmer nights that din't help much to feel better. I would have loved to talk for ten minutes to someone I knew. Ey man, how you're doing, everything is fine, let's go for a beer this weekend, see ya. That would have made it.


This is from my diary:

When it's cold in the tent and the floor is rocky you feel lonely.
When you never have the money to pay the dinner and at night you are always eating your two-days old bread with cheap cheese while everyone is having fun at their fine soup and their steak... You feel lonely
When beautiful girls pass by, accompained by some unknown guys... You feel lonely
When memories of much warmer nights in much more beautiful places hit you like an invisible wall... Hell, you're lonely.
When after 80 days of walking you still have no fucking idea of what to do with your life, you're really lonely.


You are in a different state of mind and soul than the "normal" person when you seek for solitude like I have done. Some days I was meeting less than 5 persons, and I talked more than five minutes with only one of them, the guardian of the refuge. You know how terrible it can be if the only person you have a conversation with in the whole day, maybe in two days, says you something that hurts you? Something like "You need a fork? Well, Mr. Autonomy is not as autonomous as he seems, is he?" - Or "80 days from Munich? That's pretty slow. You aren't in a hurry, are you?"
It can absolutely screw your day.


In the same manner, there are days that walking angels appear to be in your way. In two occassions I met farmers with their cars. The stopped as they passed by and they asked what I was doing and where I was going. They were amused and impressed by my story and they wished the best and drove on. After five minutes they returned with the car. They had cheese, cookies, milk, bread, they had brought it for me.

Can you imagine what that means to me? An unexpected plastic bag with cheese, cookies and bread? Can you feel the way my eyes open, the amazing size of that present they are making? Can you understand the message, the energy, the magic these persons can share with me with that simple things?

Let's recall: While in the pyrinees, I met few people. I met few civilization. It was not evident if I would find food or drinking water this day or even the next two or three. There were no villages nearby ( < 3,4h by foot) to search for help. Weather was not forgiving up there. It was pure nature, all the good, and all the bad things.

In short: It was hard. Very hard. And these people knew it. And when they saw me there, their reaction was to gave me something that would give me the confidence to make another day through the wonderful and wild mountains, something that would definetly aid to kill the bad solitude, the nights of being afraid in the tent when thunders were falling, the days where you had to climb 1500 m under the hell of a sun, the days were you were wishing so hard, SO HARD to receive a hug, a kiss, a caress, to be in the arms of someone that loved you and said it silently in your ears.

With their cheese and cookis these people were saying hold on, man. Punch that bad solitude in the face. Hold on. You're doing it. You really fucking came here from Munich, you will do that huge mountain over there, keep on fighting, I appreciate your walking, I want to help you, I believe in you and I walk with you in thougts, do it, man, walk, continue, do it, fight, you're winning, man, you are making your way to your dreams.

And THESE things are the biggest presents I have ever received in my life.

And the people that gave me some money when I asked for it were saying the very same things, holding my back against the wind, helping me with the logistics but much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much more with the soul. Each donation was saying: We trust you, Samuel, you're doing it, we're proud, do it your Way. You may be alone and cold tonight but your friends are out there and wish you the Best.

And it makes me cry. Thank you (:

And well, I wanted to talk a bit about the Ocean.. Seeing it was uncredibly. But I'll let the pic talk:

(After nearly 100 days.... The Ocean. Home.)




(Good morning, world)




(To me, this looked like a ship that was anti-wrecking


SPAAAAAAAAAAAAIN!!!!!!!!!!!! :D



Some phrases from songs or poems I have in my mind:
" Corazón solo por el planeta, sembrando flores en la tormenta "
" Pero el viajero que huye tarde o temprano detiene su andar "


Some songs that follow me



Mercedes Sosa - Milonga por él , Galopa Murrieta, Canción para Carito















And now, to finish with this slightly melodramatic post, to boost you all in your Way throught life and to reaffirm my will to arrive in less than one month to the very End of Europe, come what come, lonely or not, with heat or rain or thunder, please play the following song very,
very
loud.



'cause

(I)(You)(We) will always go the next step



(Thanks again, cool people of all colours, shapes and languages :D!)
(Oh, and some interesting news: I had to take some important decisions on the way here. I am leaving physics. I am landing in Madgeburg (southwest of Berlin), and I will give Neurosciences a big try. It was a hard decision between Tübingen and Madgeburg... That's it. Let's walk.)