Real World Redux ... was Re: [at-l] The Pa Ruck....Maybe!

[sloetoe@yahoo.com (Sloetoe)]

--- kahley7 <kahley7@ptd.net> wrote: 
> The Real World is where people get sick and old and life presents
> many questions that have no answers.
### People get sick and old and *die* on the trail, but the questions life
presents tend to have stark, raving,
bop-you-upside-the-head-in-their-clarity answers.
 
> Out there...on the Trail, I may still not have the answers,
> yet no one but me suffers for the choices i make.
### Sounds excrutiatingly real to me.....

> I also have no power over anything or anyone.
> Being powerless frees me.
### Au'contraire! (He said, hoping to have not mutilated the French.) You
have the power over what you do with your time; how much energy you put
into any activity; when you take a break; when you over-exert "just
'cause"; when you eat, sleep, and poop; *what* you eat, *where* you sleep;
with *whom* you associate (and truly *whether* you associate); whole
manner of lifestyle, from hygiene to hiking, is yours to call. You have
the power over the most basic of human activities, and indeed have a mind
freed to entertain the most lofty of human endeavors, as well.

> In the real world i am a mere servant of my family and society.
### Your choice. As you know, my divorce pushed me to choose to *not* hike
the AT (or PCT, or CDT) this past year, because of my two-most-excellent
SmallBoys'(c) ferocious need for their father. That is *my* situation,
however, and my not hiking this past year reflects *my* choices; I have
and will continue to encourage others in 'similar' circumstances to 'go'
-- and in the going set one helluvan example by setting a goal, grubbing
it out, and seeing it through (and other important life-lessons). (And
oddly enough, my boysens are too experienced to benefit in this manner
from their Dad undertaking a throughhike. Dangit, they learned *these*
'hiking' lessons long ago.) Anyhow, for the cost of a six-month absence,
you can set an example that can pay dividends to *all* those around you
for decades. It depends how you work it. (And I'll put my money where my
mouth is: as you may know, I recently joined the cdt-l, and in reply to a
post I made, Ginny asked me the terrible question "When?" My reply was
"don't know, but if I don't position myself for it, it *surely* won't
happen. If circumstances present themselves allowing a throughhike, *and*
I'm positioned to go, I *will* go." One of those circumstances, *one* of
those 'positionings', will be whether I can present this to my boys such
that the example I set by going will contribute more to them in their
lifetimes than my presence [meted out in six months' worth of 'visitation'
and the example I set by *not* going. Depends how [I] work it.)

> Out there I feel like a god and i know that_ain't_real.
### Sounds pretty powerful to me (but it contradicts the powerlessness you
mention above). Oddly enough, when I hike well (or run well, even), I get
so introspective that my social interaction skills loose the fascade of
... well, of the pretention I mentioned originally, and I end up appearing
(I'm sure) somewhat shy and humble and hesitant, much like that mentioned
in the beginning of the very enjoyable S.E.T.H. thread. I recognize my
smallness in the universe, on the planet, in the nation and society of
which I'm a part, and I recoil from my usual "East Coast" ('New York')
bravado-shielded self. We're out there only 'cause we worked up money by
serving *the*man* somewhere, and we'll only return to the woods by serving
again. Humbling. But extremely real.

My food for thought, anyway.
Sloetoe
(getting humbler by the second)


=====
There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of the great and generous emotions of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder.

T.Roosevelt 4/23/10

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