So I joined a Facebook group about Kumano Kodo, the route I’ll be walking in Japan. I told them I’ll be showing up and seeing what’s possible, and asked what the wild camping options are plus food etc. I got jumped immediately by loads of voices that say “planning is essential” “rebook your flight” “book a year in advance” etc. One guy told me it was perfectly possible to sneak off the path with a bivvy at dusk and his post was almost immediately taken down by admins. I happened to be there to catch it. The major voice I have received is “Don’t do this without planning”. And I’m not interested in being disrespectful in a culture I don’t understand. I’m sure that bivvy camping would fit that mould. I’ll do it if I must but it would feel wrong. I really really distrust all these voices telling me it’s impossible to go last minute. It smells like a kneejerk discouragement to cut back numbers.
A lot of the people giving me advice are really saying “Don’t do this walk without understanding the spiritual side of it.” I’m looking at their pedestrian American Facebooks and wondering how they feel qualified. I’m not going to respond by linking them to the “I’m more spiritual than you” video.
https://youtu.be/yb8PVRgi-74?si=dOoyeoMjk7SeCaf9
But many of the messages seem to be empty but for the intention of telling me not to suddenly do the thing they did after freaking out about it for six years first. The other half is Americans telling me I don’t know Buddhism / Shinto where I could write a much better book then they could on either subject. And I understand that left brain writing a book is not at all how such matters should be quantified or approached. Competitive religion? Go swivel.
My socials are rarely involved with my woowoo. But I’m a practicing Japanese Buddhist with a huge amount of animism in my structures that aligns deeply with shintoism. I didn’t just stick a pin in a map here.
Yeah ok, I’ll allude to it. One human knows EXACTLY why this is the right walk for me now. He’s the only one that knows it apart from me, but I’ve got heavy things to deal with in Japan from past lives, and this journey doesn’t need to be easy – maybe even it needs to be hard.
The other people in this restrictive Facebook group are largely helping me see the difference between Europe and Japan. They plan stuff in Japan. The vast neurosis I perceive on Camino groups from Americans is probably because there are only about twelve beds on the whole Kumano, and ten of them were bought a decade ago by travel agents hoping to resell at astronomical markups to lazy tourists. This is not a very well walked route in the UK. But I get the sense it’ll be full of Americans. Which again makes sense of why the internet things I can find are about discouraging numbers. Can anyone be bothered being social on a pilgrimage? It’s about the reason you’re walking, always, surely. Not the people.
I thought I knew why I was walking. But all the Facebook neurosis and planning bullshit makes me realise something fundamental and important. That’s what I need to learn. The planning bullshit. The neurosis. I need to shift into a place where it isn’t a violation of my standards to know where I’ll eat dinner next week. I hate it, the forward thinking. I can happily look at the past because it informs the now. “This-one’ is all about the now. But thoughtful projection into the future can inform how it all works out in the now. As soon as you take expectation out, most outcomes are tolerable. That’s how I’ve existed for years. But curating the outcome doesn’t always mean wasted now time for the same or less future happiness. Sure, a lot of the time planning people live in the future for hours and hours of present time, and it doesn’t actually pay back when their present shifts to the future they planned. But there are times when you get a return on your investment – a bit more future happiness than the deadtime planning.
I think Japan energy needs a plan. And I need to learn about thinking ahead. So. Alignments. I’m gonna murder a half day or more with spreadsheets and internet. I’m hoping it’ll buy more time than it sinks. And maybe I’ll learn something. Sorry. Thoughts all got dense there and I’m too tired to edit it. Thank you for sinking your now into that then. I’m not gonna.
AlBarclay 