Ali Walks Around

When I was walking to Camino de Santiago,

one of the lessons I learned right away

was to not rush through the walk

for fear of not getting a bed at the end of each day.

On my first day walking, I pretty much ran the whole way.

I worried all morning that the beds at the albergue would run out.

And my hike was horrible.

I was not enjoying the moment.

I was not meeting people

or taking in nature and the adventure

that I granted myself.

But every day, even when I woke up late

and took my time walking

and stopped to wander in churches

or take pictures of flowers,

there was always a bed.

There was even a time when I was wandering through a town

trying to find a hostel with open space

when all rooms seemed to be full,

a random pilgrim came up to me

and told me about a hidden pension that was right around the corner

that had available beds.

It turns out I had a bed waiting for me the whole time.

Every night.

Later that week,

when I showed up in a town that was completely full

and not even a single bed

or gap on the floor

was vacant for a tired, sweaty pilgrim,

I decided just to keep walking.

And I found a bed

waiting for me in the next town.

There will always be a bed.

This is something that many of us humans do not believe,

or have trouble believing,

because we were told that we had to earn our beds.

We wake up every day in fear

that there won’t be a bed for us tomorrow.

We work and work and work

so that we can save enough to have a guaranteed bed

when we are older

and our bodies cannot work anymore.

But life becomes more expensive

and it demands more and more from us

and we still feel like we cannot rest

even when we are ninety years old.

We feel that our bed is conditional

and we’re left unable to quiet our minds at night

because there won’t be grace given to us

if we cannot afford to pay for our bed

just even for one night.

We never feel at ease.

We feel that there’s no end to liberation.

This is what many feel here in the United States

or within any capitalistic nation.

Even though this feeling of fear is real for many of us,

the threat itself is not.

The idea that there will not be a bed for you

unless you work for it

was created to indoctrinate fear into people

so they are more likely to follow along.

But the universe’s notion

is that there will always be a bed for you

to rest.

There will always be a person to house you,

someone to hug you,

and someone to take care of you

without costing a single penny.

Because love is not transactional,

even when the system tries to make it so.

So how do we tell our people that there will always be a bed for them

when they have been taught their whole life

that their right to rest is not theirs to take?

This perspective change is not a light switch.

It takes time to feel like this

if you have grown up feeling insecure.

It takes time to trust.

But it’s also a practice.

It takes work to find and keep people

that will give you a pillow.

It takes time to build a working life

that you can find honor in

and that will also pay your bills.

Trust is not granted overnight,

but it is also not gifted.

It takes work to realize that debt is not real.

That it is imagined.

That the only thing that is real is you

and your heart

and your soul

and your instincts

and your need for rest.

These are all True,

with a capital T.

We can live with debt,

but debt is not us.

We should learn to trust each other

rather than the imagined realities we’ve created,

because others will give us a bed

when the system will not.

We should trust that even though there will be hard times

and our beds may look or feel different each night,

we will always be able to rest

and wake up the next day

and find joy in it.

And even if we lose our bodies

and we can’t feel them

as they lay in bed,

our soul still needs that bed

whether our bodies can feel it or not.

Rest is not about finding security in the future,

rest is about letting go every day.

There will always be a bed.

There will always be an opportunity to let go and breathe.

Because even though we can’t trust that nothing bad will happen to us tomorrow,

we can trust that tomorrow we will rest somewhere.

Angels will see us floating

and give us a pillow.

Our loved ones will call us

and make sure that we are okay.

Our bodies will ensure us

that we can keep walking to our next bed.

And the earth will cry with us

so that we can sleep.