I decided to deviate from my walking plan today and head off in a different direction altogether to stop monotony setting in if for nothing else. Also though I have a head cold and onset of a sore throat so had little desire to head to my usual shopping route where the brightness and noise is more intense than anywhere else. So off I went not expected to go very far and getting exactly what I expected. Mostly as I walked I was telling myself it was time to head back- 2 minutes in. Constant. Turn back, what if? A thousand tales spun and told and all from the darkest depths of fears in the mind. And as I walked I could see the difference is not the body but the mind. The body is fine. It can keep walking. Well sort of. The mind affects the body. Fear is born in the mind and reaches out to turn all the knobs and pull all the levers to take action which comes in the form of a relaxing stroll turning into a quick frantic bolt to reach as far out as possible and run as quickly back. The anxious mind turns a slow gentle breath into a rapid short bout of hyperventilation and how can anyone really walk far in that state. The journey of a thousand miles may start with one step but it also begins with a clear settled mind. My journey of slightly less than that begin with a single step then every increasingly rapid ones after until they about turned.
Later I was watching Michael Portillo on the South West coast path which I think he said is the longest in Britain. Its beautiful. Its raw and even possibly scary at times but its alive with the elements is the roaring of the sea and the movement all around from strong winds. I wished to be there. I wished to be walking it alone with a tent and some provisions and just feeling alive in the moment. And that was very much what he was talking about as he was saying it was born of losing a year to COVID and the need to get out. He also recalled how after leaving office and experiencing great turmoil in his life as a result how he find a kind of peace talking to people who lived simply along the route of the Camino de Santiago- he'd gone there to get away from it all. Another path I too would love to take. But when I cannot even walk to the shops without panic it seems a pipe dream at the moment.
It got me thinking about how my mind is rebelling against me. It made me wonder why. Why is my mind having such a negative effect on my life? Why can I not control that? Questions I have been asking myself for decades and I still have no answers. But I do have an inkling that my mind works against me because it does not trust my body. It does not think that I can walk to the shops without incident and so as soon as I set out to do it I get the alarms and all the physical sensations that hinder me doing exactly that. My mind mistrusts the body and yet it appears it is the cause of the mistrust. And there is me sitting outside it all looking on helpless to do anything about it. So is there anything I can do? Experience has shown me there are only 3 things I can do and none of them bring short term contentment. I have to repeat my walks daily, I have to accept that it is going to be difficult each time and I need to be patient with it. In time it will sort itself out. My mind will trust the body more because the repetition will mean that it will get used to doing the same thing over and over and so accept it in the end. That is how it worked a good few years ago. I went from not being able to leave town for over a decade to going on holidays and travelling the country. I've seen the solution. Its simple but not easy and the most important thing is patience. Patience comes from accepting how things are and knowing that if I repeat what I did before I will get well again.
