“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.” ~Wendell Berry
I was watching television one night when something on the screen made me set everything aside and go still. It was a scene where the main character, a man who loved his daughter dearly, couldn’t change what was happening to her. So, he went out into the wilderness as a kind of prayer.
I put the remote down and didn’t pick it back up. Not because what the man did was foreign to me, but because it was familiar deep in my bones. I’ve been doing something like that my whole life without ever having a name for it.
The first time was in my twenties. I had just met the woman I was going to marry and who I’m still married to today. She lived in an apartment off the Sawgrass Expressway, maybe seven or eight miles from where I lived at the time.
I could’ve driven. I had a car. But I wanted to see her, and that day something in me needed to travel on foot.
I trekked up University Drive and just kept going, past the strip malls and the traffic lights and out onto the side of the highway. By the time I got to her door, my legs were tired and my shirt was soaked. But I was happy.
I’d pushed myself to endure on the way there. She deserved that. Somewhere along the way I’d learned that tenderness often needs to move through the body before it can reach another person.
My parents live about five miles away, and I’ve covered that ground on foot more times than I can say. Walking, step after step, past the corners and yards where I grew up does something to my state of being. By the time I get there, I’m fully present and appreciative of the gift it is to see them.
Sometimes the person I’m moving toward is my son, who’s worn the number five in sports since he was too small to explain why. When I found out that Brooks Robinson, a Hall of Fame third baseman I admired for both his talent and kindness, had worn that number too, I walked several miles to the baseball card store and back. I wanted my son to know that his number had been worn by someone worth looking up to, and it felt right to make a journey of it.
Once, when I was carrying more stress from work than I knew what to do with, I hiked fourteen miles to the beach. I didn’t tell anyone. I just kept going until the street ended, the ocean was in front of me, and the tension had fallen off my shoulders.
That’s what these long walks have always been for me. A way of transferring something from the inside to the outside. A way of saying, with my whole body, that this challenge, person, or moment matters enough to be honored.
A few years ago, my daughter was going through a hard time. My wife and I tried everything we could think of to support her. But I was left sitting with that helpless feeling every parent knows, the one where you would trade places with your child if you could.
Sometimes all you can do is love someone from a distance and hope it reaches them somehow. I’d done everything else I could think of and come up empty. So I laced up my sneakers and headed west.
I moved past the bus stops and plazas, past the vacant lots where the city starts to thin out, past the point where the sidewalks end and the land becomes something 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 ahead but open space.
I stopped at the fence that marks the beginning of the Everglades. The sawgrass stretched all the way to the horizon, and the sky was endless. Nothing out there knew my name or cared what I was worried about.
My feet ached. My lungs had worked hard. I had exhausted myself to get there.
Standing at the edge of that wilderness, I let myself want her to be okay in the most raw, undefended way I could manage. I stood there a long time. Then I turned around and made my way home.
When I got back, the temperature had dropped into the thirties. I went to the backyard and got in the pool, and the cold hit me like a wall. I stayed in that water and thought about her the whole time.
It was a small act and maybe a foolish one. But it felt like the truest thing I could do.
I don’t know if any of it helped her, though she’s doing better now. I won’t pretend the road or the cold water had anything to do with that. But I think I understand now what I’ve been doing out there all these years.
When love gets deep enough, it builds up inside you, and it needs to move. Some people talk to friends, some write, and some hold on tight until things get better. I pour myself out in the direction of 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 those we hold dear. Something about accepting that takes time and distance. Walking is how I work through what I can’t resolve so I can be more fully available and grounded for the ones I care about.
I guess the scene on television that night touched me so deeply because I’d been doing what that man did long before I saw him do it on the screen. Neither of us had a better option, and neither of us needed one. He went out into the wilderness for his daughter, and I walked to the edge of the Everglades for mine.
We don’t always have the answers, but we have the love, and we find ways to keep expressing it anyway.
I think that might be the most human thing there is.
About Daniel H. Shapiro
Dr. Daniel H. Shapiro is keynote speaker, author, and mentor. He is passionate about human connection and the stories we carry with us. For more information about his book, The 5 Practices of the Caring Mentor, or his mentoring and speaking services, check out yourinherentgoodness.com.
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