…FEAR OF…

Stage 6 / Saturday 2 May / From Champis to Vernoux-en-Vivarais / 15 km

 

Today, the path is only rollercoaster hills: I am constantly descending and going back up. My shadow, which on this beautiful sunny morning is cast in front of me as I walk towards the southwest, slides silently over the irregularities of the path. Faithful companion unceasingly attached to my feet, it seems to tease me in the ease with which it progresses and frolics with every obstacle. I even believe it’s talking to me, I who am feeling new aches from yesterday’s steep and difficult climb. “You should have trained more before starting this pilgrimage. One cannot be an ad hoc pilgrim. You shouldn’t have put so much useless stuff in your backpack. You …this, you …that!”

 

It’s like a person running beside me, constantly watching and judging me. I feel like shouting: “Shut up, you stupid shadow! I already have a conscience, and that’s quite enough!” Yes, this pack is heavy: it’s the weight of my conscience made of an accumulation of deficiencies and failures I can’t stop deploring. Most of them are minor, but their accumulation aggravates me and weighs me down. And I can’t stop lowering my head under the weight of the past. Instead of emptying this too heavy pack, I hoard these long-gone offenses. And yet, if I emptied out this pack, its lighter weight would enable me to raise my head and enjoy contemplating more happily all the generous blessings for which I have been and still am grateful.

 

Why must I weigh myself down with past blunders, first those of which I was a victim, as much as those I later inflicted on others? It’s still and always: “Oh, if only this … if only that … if I had known … if I had been willing …” And moreover it’s each of these shortcomings: “Oh, if I had done … this rather than … that!” By my excessive scrutiny, the rear-view mirror has become enormous. It’s even hiding the windshield. And what is behind prevents me from admiring what’s coming!

How long will I be dragging this overload of unpleasantness undergone or inflicted, this ballast of suffering and guilt that I’m dragging up over hill and dale? I’m surprised to find myself accusing my ancestors of having planted a conscience in me and calibrated out its weight. I know that they carried such burdens before me, but why have they persisted in teaching me what the word “sin” means? Ah, there it is, released, this word “sin” with which God’s representatives were so inclined to inoculate my young mind!

 

Now meanwhile, my shadow seems to be playing with everything, laughing at changing its size to caress a dip in the path here, and a roundness there. One moment short, the next long, suddenly narrow before enlarging, I see it repeating to me again and again: “Be free and ever adaptable! Bite the forbidden fruit impudently wanting to experience everything. Revel in everything that exists. Don’t be afraid to abandon your sad and heavy three-dimensional condition subject to limits and gravity! You were able to laugh at the incongruities imagined by postman Cheval of Hauterives, weren’t you?”

How do I liberate myself? Should I continue to hold safe and sound the feeling of carting a load of responsibilities and guilt, a burden which was undoubtedly given back to me by mistake. Wouldn’t I do better to hit the “erase” button, bleaching all my history and removing myself by a decision of disbelief in all my litter of regrettable evocations?

 

OK, it’s not all that simple. This is about me. I’m hardly going to throw out the baby with the bathwater! Before I hit the “delete” button, I need to decide what to keep and what to pitch. For that I must dare to analyze my errors and failures. Because, if I don’t want to repeat a previous mistake in the future, I have to keep it in memory. So don’t pitch it; keep it in order to get around it!

 

I’m getting tired! And after so many saw-tooth ridges, ups and downs, embankments and ruts, what about granting myself a little pause? My shadow, growing behind me at the approach to Vernoux-en-Vivarais doesn’t dare laugh: it knows that the sun is going to disappear behind a steeple, and the shadow with it! So it’s decided: tomorrow will be my first Sunday rest!