It was 7:30 am.
The coffee shop was empty
Nestled on the second floor, looking out on the plants and uninhabited tables, I opened my notebook to plan the week ahead.
Writing out the days of the week vertically on the left, I began to fill the space between days with pre-scheduled appointments and various pre-school meetings.
On the right side of the page, I wrote all the things I wanted to do that week.
With both lists complete, I looked right, then left, and right again.
In my attempt to return to my pre-walk productivity, I was paralyzed in trepidation.
I could not systematically plan the week ahead as I had once done.
My list of to-dos was ever long, yet my seeming desire to get them done was at an inexperienced low.
Had I returned home some loaf with no desire or work ethic?
Did I leave all sense of productivity somewhere between St. Jean and Santiago?
Somewhere Along the Camino, I Swapped Productivity for Patience
With nearly 20 days of walking left, my all-time bucket list adventure had become another task to complete.
The early weeks of systematic morning routines, dutifully planned walking itineraries, and forced journal entries became the walls of my mind's self-made prison.
My steadfast adherence to a daily routine, became the cell bars, a partition, as I looked out onto the world.
Outside the bars, anxiety paced back and forth, its nightstick dragging along the bars of my cell. The notion of relinquishing control over my life and the world around me, enslaving me to a prison of my design.
We Believe We Are in Complete Control of the World
We wake up at a time we want, eat what we want, go where we want, watch, read, and listen to whatever we want: we do just about everything on our terms.
Yet, we are fragile.
And our fragility is only exposed when we are placed in an albergue with no air conditioning, surrounded by 25 other pilgrims, in a town with no grocery store, Wi-Fi, or place to go.
In the face of such a shock, our self-made systems crumble along with our inflated idea of control.
We Have Not Gained Control
We've created systems that crumble at the introduction of the oddball.
*Oddball: a low probability event that occurs, disrupts the rhythm of our highly predictable processes and changes our perception of time due to the level of cognitive function needed to adapt to the new stimuli.
We've removed uncertainty and randomness in an attempt to make our lives predictable in their smallest detail for the sake of comfort, convenience, and efficiency (Taleb, 2012, pp. 62-63).
If we're lucky, we have created robust systems.
When the oddball is introduced, our lives stay unchanged: the car accident on the freeway, toilet that keeps cycling water, or unplanned bill that needs to be paid does not send your day into a spiral, but they also do not provide a meaningful lesson either.
Luck has little to do with the lives we live.
To truly capitalize on our brain's second layer memory encoding, our systems must gain strength from the introduction of the random outlier in our day.
We must create systems that are antifragile.
We're Stuck in Golden Jail
The same security exists in your repeated commute to work as there was in your unassigned, self-selected, seat in school.
The comfort we gain from the predictable, the man-made patterns and routines that dictate our lives, are the same things stopping us from truly living.
For Nassim Nicholas Taleb PhD, we've become prisoners of a Golden Jail.
Distinguished professor of both NYU and Oxford, critic of modern risk management strategies, author of Antifragile: Things That Gain Order from Disorder (2012), Taleb uses “Golden Jail” to describe modern life's removal of uncertainty and randomness to make itself highly predictable.
This idea is teased in Chapter 3, The Cat and The Washing Machine, as he details how modern life “treats humans as washing machines, with simplified mechanical responses” (62)
Calling us tourists within our own lives, Taleb posits a “touristification” process has occurred, wherein we have devolved from adventures to simple stage actors.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Macbeth 5.5.26-30
Instead of exploring the unknowns of each day, we trade serendipity for a predetermined script. We know what to do when, and how to feel during. Our leisure becomes an inauthentic performance.
Like fish in water, the walls of this jail are so integral to our lives, to be asked to identify them is near impossible.
We slowly build these walls as we grope through the uncertainty of life, hoping to stumble upon some sort of congruence amidst the many unknowns.
However, instead of sitting in the darkness for just a moment longer, we build artificial lights that drown out the approaching break of dawn.
That is, until the unstructured, unplanned, spirit of The Camino comes barreling in like the Kool-Aid Man.
Our Brains Are Not Machines
The brain is a highly complex organ that has evolved to ensure our survival that we have tricked.
Because we know when our package is going to arrive, our coffee will be ready, and how much time we need to commute, our brain internalizes an inherent control of the world.
Your pre-ordered coffee will be waiting at the window, but will your economy collapse, another war erupt, or piece of technology shift the way you interact with the world?
What inputs do you have to affect these outcomes?
Our brain's evolved pattern recognition creates fragile systems to drown out the reality of how little control we have in the world.
This is Not Your Fault
Over time, the brains learn patterns, uses these patterns to make future decisions, and shapes our cognitive process, all while we sip our coffee and sing in our cars (How the brain, n.d., para. 3).
In one South Korean study, when participants were shown images that changed with regularity, brain scans revealed improved reaction time with each passing image, yet participants stated they could not distinguish any regularity to the images being shown.
“They were unaware that their brains had recognized a pattern” yet had adapted to the situation unknowingly (How the brain, n.d., para. 7).
Consider the amount of information we encounter each day.
Conversations. Songs. Billboards. Unskippable Ads. Emails. Alerts. Vocal Tone. Facial Expressions. Body Language. Jokes.
Our brains are tasked with parsing through a plethora of noise, yet rarely are we conscious of the compartmentalizing.
As we create routines, and provide structure, our lives filter out the real noise of reality. Though our days are the same, the structure of the world is changing rapidly by circumstances far beyond our control.
If you or I had no belief of our inherent control over the world's proceeding, why do we use planners and set meetings?
There are so many memories we leave behind because we choose to be slaves to our idiosyncratic routines that pacify and coddle our minds into a sullen state of safety in the form of a predictable routine
When we do this, however, we remove the certain uncertainty of the oddball experiences that give life its true meaning.
Slow Down, Each Day is Its Own
Within the first week of The Camino, you come to understand the plans you make are not definite.
You have no control.
Between St. Jean, Pamplona, Burgos, Leon, and Santiago, the small towns of The Camino do not offer much beyond a bed and a meal: even then, the menus are preset and beds assigned.
Slowly, you come to understand, the one aspect of the journey you can control, your body, cannot alleviate the burden that comes with realizing the commitment you undertook.
Your pace on any given day does not change your arrival to Santiago: the days are already numbered.
It is enough to drive anyone insane, yet for many of us, it is this bit of insanity that makes the journey worth it.
No matter the guidebook or app, you end up in the same town as everyone else: most pilgrims agree that 25 km (15.53 mi) is the maximum amount of walking needed to feel accomplished but not dead.
Averaging 20–25 km (12–15 mi) of walking a day, the choice to blaze ahead meant upwards of 40 km (24.85 mi) to the next big town.
With no garuntee the small towns between would offer sleeping arrangements, choosing to walk further, in an attempt to reach Santiago earlier, could delay your trip with blisters, injuries, and the host of issues that come with a poorly kept albergue.
Regardless of your strong desire to speed up your trip, each day became its own.
There was no tomorrow.
There was only today's walk and the town you stopped in: this was your world.
Life Should Not Be a Highway
We are used to speeding along the freeway, paying for non-ad subscriptions, or recording shows to fast-forward through commercials.
Despite Adam Sandler's warning, we skip the unnecessary, laborious part of our journeys to reach our individually specified goals.
But it is these monotonous moments that prime our brain to make new, deeper memories.
The conversation at the bodega, the rainbow skewed across the sky, the eye roll of a French woman upon hearing you are American, each of these moments stand far removed from the day's journey.
The Camino is built for the pilgrim to experience the odd and the fascinating, and our lives can be too.
The Search for Serendipity
Sitting in the booth that Sunday morning, frozen in fear, overwhelmed by uncertainty, I was reminded to slow down and take each day as its own.
That same day, when a casual coffee catch up turned into an 8-man brunch, I was reminded that life is meant to be a slow journey.
Sitting at a table of other young catholic professionals, the day provided me the chance to expand my circle of friends, share in the joy of the Church community, and give witness to the beauty of Christ in the lives of others.
Had I scheduled my entire day to a tee like I tried earlier that morning, that moment would have been stressful if it even existed.
I would have been looking at my wrist, searching for a non-existent watch, trying to casually peer at my phone without signaling disinterest. All the while knowing, the time I budgeted for the one-on-one coffee was inadequate to that needed for the community brunch of that morning.
I would have resented these people.
Their stories, their lives, their being.
I would not have seen them or truly heard them.
I would have heard the prison guard yelling that recess was over, and it was time to get back into my cell.
But I had no watch.
And no set plans.
You Can't Search for the Oddball.
When the world exists somewhere between 12 and 15 miles, it becomes infinitely smaller.
There is no tomorrow because the possibility of being there is mentally and physically impossible.
All you have is today and what is being offered to you each moment.
There is no set schedule on The Camino, and plans are loose.
Maybe your blisters are too painful, or you meet a group you want to walk with: you may have thought you were walking to a certain city, but your plans have changed.
The Camino is a Truly Antifragile System.
As shocks are introduced, it becomes stronger, and it forces you to as well, else you book a plane ticket home when you arrive to Pamplona.
The moments where plans did not come to fruition, where you compromise with the group, where the markets are closed, towns are sleeping, and just about everything you thought was wrong.
These are the moments that make The Camino what it is.
To escape the Golden Jails of our mind's creation, we have to challenge ourselves to find comfort outside the repetition of the known.
We have to be aware that the “signs from the universe” are more likely our evolved brain filtering out the noise and helping us stay focused on what it is we think we truly want.
Though I have stopped wearing a watch, the time seems to find me just the same, giving me opportunities to tick a few items from my unscheduled to-do list amidst impromptu gatherings, movie breaks, and random dance parties.
I know what needs to get done, like I knew I was walking toward Santiago.
Perhaps it will get done today, perhaps tomorrow, who am I to know.
What I do know, however, is that trying to control the world is like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube or fold a hose that is on full blast.
Life is not a list of items to do, but a life to live with things to do when the time offers itself.
The time will offer itself.
In the same way that when I now sit in meetings, watchless, and the other person remarks, how much time do you have left, or I should probably let you go, the world will signal to you when the time to move is the right.
The question is, are you willing to sit in the darkness of the unknown for just a bit longer before the dawn breaks on a new day?
How the brain performs pattern recognition without us noticing. (n.d.). Technology Networks. Retrieved August 23, 2024, from https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/how-the-brain-performs-pattern-recognition-without-us-noticing-364680
Taleb, N. N. (2012). Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder. New York, Random House
Cover Photo by Cathryn Lavery on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/person-writing-on-a-book-fMD_Cru6OTk
Opening Instagram Reel Created by rachel.ann.thomas: https://www.instagram.com/rachel.ann.thomas/
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