Despite my many journeys, I am still prone to a disease I call ‘peregrinus nervosa,’ the nervous pilgrim. In a couple of days I shall fly to Europe and resume my long walk that began a year ago in Canterbury. The process for each journey is about the same in terms of planning. Spouse has checked my itinerary, twice, as have I. After a dozen such experiences you would think this would be almost casual, but no.
Serenity is For Sissies
Maybe that’s too strong, but pilgrimage is anything but serene, something I have said more than once. There is an ireducible anxiety that started when I discovered a night that was not booked and the rooms I wanted were not available. Then there was booking a train that I thought would be easy only a week ahead. Wrong.
There are those who saunter along naturally, who can stroll through the world with an innate serenity. But they are also the folks who end up sleeping in train stations or haylofts, getting robbed or injured. Those are not risks a 71 year old wants to take, knowing the cost in time and money and health would likely be quite high. Just imagining being in a remote French emergency room or police station, with my modicum of French language, is enough to make me nervous. Being worried is rational, not despite but because of my previous journeys.
But Wait, There’s More!
Worry is real in two other ways. One is personal.
I am by nature anxious. Yes, there is childhood stuff there, too long for this post. But I think it is the way I am wired . The Mayo Clinic lists a few things that dispose someone toward anxiety:
- Experiencing significant stressors
- Having a genetic predisposition to anxiety
- Who grew up in families where they felt less secure
- Who had caregivers who also were anxious or had high expectations of them
I can tick two or three of those boxes easily. One of the ways I manage my anxious nature is to put myself in anxious situations on purpose, somewhat like the homeopathic theory. Adventurous travel does that.
The other is more abstract but the most important. In a book noted in an earlier post, Japanese Pilgrimage emphasizes the role of ‘displacement’ in pilgrimage, which is essential to seeing the world in a deeper way. One must be out of place to see the world from a different perspective. Makes sense, right? And a natural response to being out of place is anxiety or nervousness.
Carpe Nervosa, Then!
My pilgrimage began in earnest when its imminance raised my anxiety. In a sense I am already on my way as I check and double check, pack and repack. I have learned from the past that my anxiety is not just reasonable from a practical point of view, but valuable as part of my spiritual life. If being anxious is part of who I am, then owning it rather than resisting it is actually rather serene of me, in a bizarre sense. Carpe Nervosa, then, seize the anxiety!
If that sounds paradoxical, perhaps I am my own zen koan.
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