This week, our journey into greater emotional granularity follows the path of pilgrimage, the purposeful mindset of traveling that seeks the happenstance of insight before the concrete goal of the destination is achieved. The thing about a pilgrimage is that it requires an ongoing struggle rather than a single, brief, clarifying conflict. One of the greatest opponents in a pilgrimage is the cumulative effect of a long, slow slog.
So, although a pilgrimage may begin with the edgy emotion of trepidation, it quickly settles into a steady rhythm in which novelty of the road soon wears thin. The road goes ever on and on, and on and on and on and on…
Deep within the mines of Moria, Frodo and his companions followed turn after turn in the cold, dull rock, nearly devoid of life, until they could no longer tell how long they had been walking. “They were more than weary, and yet there seemed no comfort in the thought of halting anywhere.”
In the real world, Sonja Maryn wrote of her time on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, “I limped into towns and shabby ‘albergues,’ the traditional accommodation of basic, mixed-gender dormitories. I cursed the weather, cursed the hairs on the shower floor, cursed my drenched, exhausted self for coming on this stupid walk in the first place.”
Weariness is the feeling of having one’s enthusiasm drained away, not as a consequence of any special exertion, but as the result of a long repetition. On the pilgrim’s path, scenery that was on the first day striking and invigorating quickly becomes dull. There is pain, but it’s a dull throb that steadily grows rather than a sharpness to distinguish any particular moment. One’s worst enemy becomes oneself, and the only reason one foot doesn’t stop going in front of another is that there is no other way to finish the journey.
The path has become a new home of homelessness, an ordinary obstacle. If only it could be over with… but there are miles and miles to go.
Still, that’s what pilgrimage is all about. As this week’s podcast points out, “Pilgrimage is inconvenient, more expensive than necessary, and requires great struggle to reach its end. These aren’t shortcomings of pilgrimage, however, but the source of its power.”
Why would anyone choose to go on a pilgrimage, knowing that they will confront such a weary way? How can the suffering become the source of a pilgrimage’s power?
These questions point us back to Viktor Frankl’s insight, noted in the very first article of Emotional Granularity here, on despair. Despair, Frankl taught, is suffering minus meaning. In pilgrimage, the length of the journey is designed to give the pilgrim space and time in which to find the meaning in the pain of their path.
A weary pilgrimage forces us to confront and question our fundamental motivations. A short trip enables only short thoughts.
