1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard. This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. 5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice.
After a good day of walking, great weather, fully in Galicia now, loving the small pueblos, the new spellings of place names and common words, seeing the letter X used in place of J, the 'ei' replacing the 'ie' of Castillian Spanish (like Portugese), hearing music that I has only up til now associated with Ireland, we arrived in Tricastella. Tricastella is named such because there once stood three castles overlooking this town. None still exist. During the construction of the Cathedrál in Santiago, pilgrims customarily carried as much limestone as they could carry from the nearby quarry to the limestone kiln in Casteñeda, almost one hundred kilometers away, to be used in the multi generation construction of this historic church, built directly upon the site where the body of James the apostle, Santiago in the Spanish parlance, was discovered.
After locating an eight euro per night albergue, getting our own bunk filled room to ourselves once again, we headed out to a local bar, Xacobelo, the Gallega word for Santiago. We started to watch a soccer match between Real Madrid, one of the powerhouses of Spanish League fútbol, and ...., were having a drink, when Ignacio, a super nice, handsome, smallish, forty something year old from Madrid, who we had met a couple of times in the last couple of days, came in, and sat down with us. Ignacio is walking only the last seven stages of the Camino, not being able to take more time from his job. He and Teo hit it off immediately with the match on TV; Ignacio, like every other Europeo that we have met, was totally surprised with T's knowledge of the game. "How do you know so much about fútbol?" He asked, like the rest of the Europeos pretty much all do.
Soon, the both of the talking current coaching decisions on players, trades, the liklihood of one player or another making their national team's starting lineup, I drifted outside with my iPad to write, have two smokes, enjoy the night air. Upon returning inside, I saw three Galegos that I recognized from our walk. They, like Ignacio, only doing the last week of the Camino, and they assertively invited me to sit down for a drink. They were seated near the front door, out of sight of T and Ignacio. I acquiesced. Soon, after they insisted that I have a second drink, wouldn't hear of me paying for it, a Cuba libre, I was deep into my interaction, assuming that T and Ignacio had plenty to talk about.
One of the guys, Alfredo, was the natural leader. Intense, eyes aflame, voice loud, full of Iberian, Galician, passion. We talked the crisis; his job, running a grocery store that he owns, how he makes big bucks selling turón, a holiday chocolate treat; the Spanish Civil War and Francisco Franco, how no one but the U.S. and Mussolini supported him, how under Franco these guys grew up in homes without heat, electricity, indoor plumbing; the Roman buildings, bridges, irrigation systems still extant; the cost of living, salaries, in the states vs. Spain; how the Germans think that all the Spanish, in their resentment towards the Spanish about their desire to join the European Union, all take siesta, pretty much do not work, want a free ride; the weather-how, as Galegos, they all know that most every November, at this time, there is usually six inches of nieve, snow, on the ground; how my Spanish is more Mexicano than Castellano-Mexicans say 'horita,' to mean 'right now,' something that I have been doing. Mostly it was Alfredo talking, the other two often disagreeing with him, causing him to pause, stretch his arms out wide, roll his eyes, make some baritone noise, scoff.
Every time that these gentlemen desired another Cuba libre, and this happened more than three or four times in the two plus hours that we visited, they would call for the bartender, raising their hands high into the air, calling, "Pepe!" The bartender would answer, "My name is not 'Pepe, it's (don't remember), but they continued, undeterred. They were gregarious, warm, engaging, interested, vivacious.
We three talked about so many things! Alfredo the most assertive of the three, like Joel in Burgos, hitting my arm with his extended fingers every so often, grabbing, almost literally, my attention, animated, assertive, in his España kind of way, talking more or less incessantly, regardless (or irregardless, if you prefer, both words, like flammable and inflammable, meaning exactly the same thing) of who I may be focusing my language penetrating radar on, talking rapidly in Spanish. My language ability jumping up maybe two notches; two, maybe three horas of intense, fascinating, illuminating language practice. At one point, deep into Cuba Libre number three, I told them that I thanked them for the ability for me to practice my 'oidos' (ears), 'lengua' (tongue), cabeza (mind), and hígado (liver!)!
As it turns out, after two plus hours of separation, the men I was talking with refused to allow me to buy a round, and Ignacio, the gentle, beautiful man that T was talking to refused to allow him to pay for his dinner, his wine. Finally, at ten minutes to eleven, the hour that our albergue closed its doors, T came to get me, we left, half ran the four blocks back, got inside, where no one was guarding the door. We traded a story or two, brushed our teeth, and turned in.
The list of regrets posted at the head of this piece has huge meaning for me. It was perhaps ten years ago that I realized that the average age of death and the average age of retirement were just too darned close together for me to feel any longer comfortable pursuing the conventional career route; this gap is about seven years long, allowing the average American male five to seven years, his oldest, most infirm, to see the world, enjoy his family, self-actualize. Soon after this understanding occurred to me, I began to make plans to change my life, to create for myself a way of living that would allow me to actually see the universe around me, to make relationships with other humans, to spend my time with my children, not just to work. I mean what is the benefit exactly of working? If the answer is the obvious one, to make money to live, then why not use less money so that one can spend less time working? The pull of consumerism, the new phone, the best clothes, cars, etc., just insure that we stay invested in the money making game, our 'career.'
In my family, and perhaps amongst many of my friends, I can not really know or say with any exactitude, I feel, and perhaps wrongly, that I am viewed as a lazy, un disciplined lout who would simply rather not work and who uses his brain to create these unconventional arguments, as I am currently dragging you through, to justify, rationalize, If you will, my lack of will power to get up early each day and hit the office, suck it up, do the time like the rest of the good producers, good citizens do. Well, dear reader, you will have to decide for yourself if the chicken comes, in this instance, before the egg, if these syllables that I spit out have any meaning or if they are just the relatively meaningless spittle of a man with no desire to work hard.
One of most fascinating parts of the whole syndrome related to persons continuing to pursue the 'career path' despite their understanding that the trade of their fifty hour weeks, their missing their own children's' childhoods to please their boss, to maybe increase their pay by three percent per annum, is that people know that they CAN get off the treadmill and change their lives, but they don't do it anyway. The term that I believe applies is called 'learned helplessness.' Experiments were done with dogs during, I believe, the 1950s, in which dogs were placed in four by four foot cages that had metal floors. The floors had electricity run through them at certain time intervals. The electricity freaked the dogs out, and they tried, at first, to move away, ran into the edge of he cage, skirted around, whined, howled. Soon though, after repeated shockings, the animals stopped trying to evade the aversive stimuli; they stopped whining even, sitting on their haunches, panting, their will crushed, acquiescing to their fate.
The really interesting part is that, when the experimenters opened the cafe door, allowing the dogs to move freely into the attached cage that did not have the electric shock running through the floor, the dogs, when the electricity was turned on, did not even try to remove themselves from it. They had learned that there was nothing that they could do, they were inured to their circumstance, used to it, no longer seeking other options. The cage was open but they stayed in it, in constant discomfort and pain, anyway. Learned helplessness. This is the term that I feel best describes workers in the modern workplace.
Stories abound of persons who, more and more, change their lives substantially, radically, leaving the conventional workplace to downsize, go off grid, travel, change their value system, in order to increase their quality of life (by which I mean happiness and wellness index, not number of cars or number of zeroes in their bank account). We all read these stories, or see them on TV. Yet why it is that most of us think that it can only be others and not us who do this is a solid mystery to me. It is not a luck thing, or an IQ thing, or a family money thing. It is a desire and a clear headed decision making thing. We can all do it, but when the door to our cage opens, we no longer have the capacity to recognize it and we stay, seated, panting, our body's nervous system frying away.
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Location:Rúa Escaleira Maior,Sarria,Spain
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