January 30, 2004

Live with What Is Necessary

Always remember that it is more important to be than to have. We must learn to live with little, to discover that life requires very few things, and that our wealth is within us.



The Camino is a demanding school of judgment between what is necessary and what is excessive because everything has weight and we cannot carry everything. Do you remember your backpack? It is what makes us realize that everything weighs and how difficult it is to carry everything. We have to overcome the idea of possessing things that enslave us to acquire more and more. Always remember that it is more important to be than to have. We must learn to live with little like on the Camino, to discover that life requires very few things, and that our wealth is within us. We must unmask the obsessive habits that make us close-minded, that keep us in our self-centered world which does not help us live with others. We have to free ourselves from the pressure to be better than anyone else or ourselves because we are essentially the same and everyone’s backpack is heavy. We have to learn to walk a little more open-mindedly, to be more humane. Your backpack should help you think about life’s loads, those things that make the road slow. These loads are personal problems, mistakes, or errors that weigh us down and sometimes overburden us. We need to let go of all those personal loads too.

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