“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our true work, and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our true journey.” ~Wendell Berry
I was watching television one night when something on the screen made me stop everything and sit still. It was a scene where the main character, a man who loved his daughter very much, couldn’t change what was happening to her. So, he went into the wilderness as a form of prayer.
I put the remote down and didn’t pick it up again. Not because what the man did was foreign to me, but because it was known deep in my bones. All my life I have been doing something that has no name.
First time in my twenties. I just met the woman I’m going to marry and who I’m still married to. He lived in an apartment near the Sawgrass Expressway, probably seven or eight miles from where I lived at the time.
I could drive. I had a car. But I wanted to see him, and something in me needed to travel on foot that day.
I trekked up University Drive and out onto the side of the highway, past strip malls and traffic lights. By the time I reached her door, my legs were tired and my shirt was wet. But I was happy.
I would push myself to endure on the way there. He deserves that. Somewhere along the way I learned that tenderness often has to pass through the body before it reaches the other person.
My parents live about five miles away, and I’ve covered that ground on foot more times than I care to count. Walking, stepping, around the corner and across the yard where I grew up does something to my condition. By the time I get there, I am fully present and grateful for the gift of seeing them.
Sometimes the person I turn to is my son, who is too young to explain why he wears the number five in sports. When I found out that Brooks Robinson, the Hall of Fame third baseman I admired for both his talent and kindness, also wore that number, I walked a few miles to the baseball card store and back. I wanted my son to know that his number was worn by someone worth watching, and it felt right to make a journey.
Once, when I was more stressed than I knew what to do with, I walked fourteen miles to the beach. I didn’t tell anyone. I kept going until the road ended, the ocean was in front of me and the tension rolled off my shoulders.
This long walk has always been for me. A way to transfer something from inside to outside. A way of saying with my whole body that this challenge, person or moment is important enough to be honored.
A few years ago, my daughter was going through a difficult time. My wife and I tried everything we could think of to support him. But I sat with that helpless feeling every parent knows, where you would trade places with your child if you could.
Sometimes all you can do is love someone from afar and hope it somehow reaches them. I’ve done everything I can think of and come up empty. So I laced up my sneakers and headed west.
I walked past the bus stop and the plaza, past the empty spaces where the city began to thin out, past the point where the sidewalk ended and the land grew wilder. It was cold for South Florida, probably in the low forties, but I kept going. I went until the last gas station was behind me and there was nothing but open space ahead.
I stopped at the fence that marks the beginning of the Everglades. Saw grass stretched to the horizon, and the sky was endless. Nothing there knew my name or cared what I was concerned about.
my leg hurts My lungs were working hard. I exhausted myself to get there.
Standing on the edge of that desert, I find myself wanting her to be okay in the most raw, vulnerable way I can manage. I stood for a long time. Then I turned around and took the way home.
When I returned, the temperature had dropped to the mid-thirties. I went into the backyard and got into the pond, and the cold hit me like a wall. I stayed in that water and thought about him all the time.
It was a small task and probably a stupid one. But it felt like the truest thing I could do.
I don’t know if any of this helped him, although he is doing well now. I won’t pretend the road or cold water has anything to do with it. But I think I now understand what I’ve been doing there all these years.
When love is deep enough, it builds up inside you and needs to be moved. Some people talk to friends, some write, and hold on tight until something gets better. I pour myself into the ones I love until I’m spent.
I’ve learned that no matter how much we want to, we can’t always change things for the ones we hold dear. Acceptance takes some time and distance. Walking is how I work through what I can’t resolve so that I can be more fully available to and for those I care about.
I guess the scene on television that night touched me so deeply because I had done what the man did long before I saw him do it on screen. None of us had a better option and none of us needed one. He went to the desert for his daughter and I went to the edge of the Everglades for mine.
We don’t always have the answers, but we do have love and we find ways to express it.
I think that might be the most humane thing.
about Daniel H. Shapiro
Dr. Daniel H. Shapiro is a keynote speaker, author and consultant. He is passionate about human connection and the stories we carry with us. For more information about his book, 5 Practices of the Caring CounselorOr check out her mentoring and speaking services yourinherentgoodness.com.
