…BEING…

Stage 31 / Wednesday 27 May / From Auvillar to Miradoux / 18 km

 

The night was restful for my brain, but my legs only want to get back on the trail in the morning. I remark that I am now “broken in” after a month of walking. All my being seeks the slightly euphoric effect created by the freeing of endorphins during muscular exercise. Have I become dependant on these internal secretions which, like opiates, bring a sense of well-being? This increases in me the feeling of fully existing, as if I had always been and was always going to be! Oh … life force!

 

As if I had “filled my tank” during the night, my internal engine is humming and roaring to go! My sense of fully existing seems magnified by the energy transmitted to my being by this fuel, from the effect of a surge of awareness. I feel myself being, I live the present moment like the result of a steady insistent thrust. And my being doesn’t stop becoming built at the pleasant rhythm of each step. This acute feeling of awareness that I have this morning (and this isn’t always the case) brings me to the conclusion that being would “be” a permanent state, but would only “exist” in your awareness of it when actualized by your “essence.”

 

The being, the part of myself that I never feel aging (my soul?) is perpetual. The essence contains all the possibilities in which the being might clothe himself, but only acts occasionally to truly reveal existence, here or there, from time to time (like the surge of awareness felt this morning). Paradox: a being is worth less no doubt for what he is than for what he could be! And also: the thought that I seek to form has more “being” than the one I’ve just noted down! And even more: the “essence” of a species is superior to that of the individual, but the “being” of the individual is superior to that of the species!

 

Conceived as a temporal invariable, containing past, present and future at the same time, what is the reality of being, in itself? I mean, beyond what I think of it? Once again, difficult to discern, this reality of the being, outside the conceptual thought, because as much “it’s because I am that I think” as “knowing that I think, I know that I am.” Neither can I ask others who know my existence to define my “being”: the lizard that I frightened on the road (if it could talk), and my friend who was concerned for me and phoned, would have had very different and necessarily incomplete perceptions of me. No, I am the only one who can try to answer the question “Who am I?” while recognizing that this question will remain open eternally.

 

Upon leaving some woods, I begin to contemplate the bastide [walled town] of Miradoux, dominated by its church, on its crest in the distance. I believe I feel “settled” in the act of contemplating it. Therefore, I feel my being in relation to this view, the view seems capable of “setting” the reality of my being. But as soon as I try to define this reality, my contemplation is no longer, my presence in relation to the view has ceased, and the being that I am is already beyond the one who was settled! Thus, here is a new paradox: my thought must wane as I try to approach the presence of my being, constantly pushed away. And there where the horizon of my thoughts ends, the being becomes … ineffable! No formulation of the being can be exact, nothing contains its entirety, it can barely be touched by silence and contemplation.

 

Being is always situated at the fringe of being and non-being, it is always in the becoming: this is not a verb of stasis but rather a verb of action, which is manifestly contradictory! Being and non-being mutually negate each other, but engender nonetheless “being there”, full of the dynamic which allows me later to say: “In the reality of my being is the fact that it has contemplated Miradoux!”

 

All that helps me anticipate the thought of my being in the act of contemplating Compostela, but that is still far off! How vague is this thought made of a few images seen in the documents consulted before leaving home. There was also some strong witnessing heard from “jacquets” (historically, pilgrims who have been all the way to Santiago)! There are than 1000 kilometers still to cover: I’d rather not think too much about that. Thus, “to be or not to be” … into Compostela … “that is my question”, I tell myself as I attack the last slope toward Miradoux! And since this dream of the goal is quite vague, I feel sadly my being as if tossed on the waves, sometimes at the crest, sometimes in the trough: “being and non-being!”