DAYS 100 & 101 - Bloomfield, IA - 1929 miles from home
- Esther Lisa Tishman
- Oct 13
- 4 min read
Over the past decade or so, popular culture has embraced ideas like minimalism and life-hacking - people creating 'capsule wardrobes' and chucking out items that fail to 'spark joy'.... We're all trying to slow down, to cut back, to find our focus in these overwhelming times. As my all-time favorite life-hacker - the immortal Ferris Bueller - puts it: "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Oh yeah!
One common hack is to take up a 100-day challenge. Commit to something for the next 100 days, and you will transform your life. That's what they say.
Well, dear friends, I've been walking on highways and byways now for 100 days. And... boy are my feet tired. (Cue rimshot.) - Seriously, though, my life has been and continues to be transformed by this Walk.
Four Lessons from 100 Days:
(1) Start where you are. The possibilities for peace really are right here. I wake up most mornings groggy and cranky. As I write these words, a handful of flies buzz around me, divebombing my face, my coffee, my computer. They are driving me crazy. I can feel my irritation mounting. Try as I might, I can't keep them out of the rig. They get in at every chance - and no amount of cracked window or shooing will coax them out. It only lets more flies in!
On the side of the road the other day I found an oldtime steel-framed fly swatter. I do not like killing flies. I'm sad that they have to die - but also know that they are going to die no matter what. Can I respond to them quickly - and without malice? This may sound absurdly sentimental, but there's truth here: if I can't figure out how to work with the flies buzzing in the rig, no chance that I can build community with my fellow pilgrims - much less with the angry rancher pointing a shotgun or the crazy uncle spouting his conspiracy theories at Thanksgiving dinner....
(2) Covid was hard for everyone. Ditto for the current effects of social media. We are all isolated and knotted up. I have yet to meet anyone who tells me that the pandemic was easy, or that their online interactions bring them endless peace and harmony. We are literally dying for (want of) face-to-face contact. We all need to unplug and plug in.
(3) The more I trust, the more I trust. Trust builds on itself. We just spent two nights in Amy and Vince's gorgeous home in Bloomfield. Vince had responded to an email forwarded to him by a work colleague - who had himself been forwarding on a request from another work colleague: the gracious Gendo Curt Thornberry, who met me at the Des Moines Zen Center. With less than two days notice, Amy and Vince opened their home and put together a dinner with friends and neighbors... taking supremely good care of us. (Vince, your lasagna! that fantastic red from Italy! Amy, the tiramisu! and those heavenly beds in the guest room with the perfect mattresses and the quilts and the down pillows! and your aussiedoodle pupster with his eviscerated llama! and the view from your back deck!)
There was no reason for Amy and Vince to host us, or to love on us. No reason for their friends Helen and John, Brenda and J.D., Dave and Deborah to welcome us with warm hugs and great stories. But we're finding each and every day that when the door gets opened even just a crack - the whole loving universe can stream in.
(4) Love isn't so hard. There's a lot that I don't like in the world. Flies in my coffee, for instance. (One literally just landed in the mug.) My morning grumpiness has everything to do with these dislikes - with the world I'd prefer to have: the world that isn't quite aligning with the actual world right here, right now. It's very very hard to like the things we don't like.
But love seems pretty easy, most of the time. It begins with that peace I mentioned above. Tenderness for my own crankiness - tenderness for the flies. Tenderness for our beautiful hosts who woke up early this morning to wish us well - plying us with muffins as we left. Tenderness for my partners in pilgrim crime, Bob and Chris, who just crossed the border into Missouri. Tenderness for my family back home.
Tenderness for the fly I just scooped out of my coffee cup. He was still alive, as it turns out - a little damp, a little caffeinated, but still fluttering. I opened the door of the rig and let him fly free.
