a pilgrim's journey.
• a journey to a place associated with someone or something well known or respected
I'm not sure where the dividing line is between determination and obsession. It's been the story of my life up to this point. I can't quiet the unsettling shriek that's pushing me toward burning to the ground the entire life I've built in the last 5 years to attempt a 6 month walk that I pray will offer some degree of redemption and absolution. It has been a life of relative stability that I'll be abandoning, at least in contrast to the chaos and self destruction of the previous decades, but I can't shake the feeling that at this moment I am just 'not dying'.
“Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying” Simone de Beauvoir
I'm also not sure where the dividing line between selfishness and salvation lies. Why would I be willing to trade the comfort and safety of the life I've assembled here in NY/CT for something far less certain? The answer lies, at least in part, in the question. Comfortable and safe leave me numb. There can be no change, at least in my life, without seismic shift; no transcendence without a good deal of mental and physical suffering. It feels like there is nothing left to learn here.
Maybe at the end of my journey to find someone well known or respected I'll be able to find some version of myself that can prove to me that my life hasn't been one of wasted potential and enormous regret. It sounds so fucking trite and just typing it out makes me feel like I'm writing some fucking self help book, but thats what I'm hoping to find. Whether I find it hiking from Springer to Katahdin or some other as yet undiscovered pilgrimage remains to be seen, but the trap has been set.
Green Tunnel from Kevin Gallagher on Vimeo.