The Call Returns: When It's Time to Walk Again
The pilgrimage path never truly leaves you. Discover why the urge to set out again always arrives, and how to answer that timeless call to the road.
A Piedi Per Il Mondo
In this article
There are many good reasons to embark on a walking journey—that much is now clear to everyone. From fitness and the pure joy of travel, to meeting new people and reaching specific goals: each departure is accompanied by great desires and aspirations.
But when the experience ends, what happens next? How do you move forward? Where do you go? Obviously, the outcome isn’t the same for everyone, at least initially: some return to their ordinary lives, resume work where they left off, pick up household tasks, care for children and grandchildren, play football; others find inspiration to start important projects, change careers, rebuild their lives. Each person certainly carries a richer backpack, but they don’t necessarily share the same destiny.
Yet, despite different visions and experiences, a day arrives for everyone when the feet start to itch and demand freedom to move again, without constraints, in contact with the simplicity of things. Because while it’s true that in reality we never truly stop walking, it’s equally true that we don’t always remember this... and fortunately there’s an inner impulse, independent of us, that invites us to set out once more.
"Life is a journey to be walked" (Chatwin)
Never sit still, some Masters urge us, because those not on a journey risk closing themselves off from the world, losing sight of the horizon, failing to realize their dreams; but there’s no need to move quickly or skip rest, to impose grand results without time for retreat. What matters is not losing the pleasure of moving forward.
Indeed, many are the stories of those who try again, retracing the same stretch of road or another, heading in the same direction or a new one, always motivated by that original drive—an instinct that seems to come from afar, innate. Whether for those who’ve covered countless kilometres with pack on their backs, or those who enjoy an afternoon stroll or a weekend trek, the moment eventually arrives when we all feel the call to set out again.
After all, walking is humanity’s most natural and ancient gesture for moving through the world and experiencing it, so it’s natural that each of us feels the pull to stretch our legs, step outside, wander, and truly live.
Rediscovering the Meaning of Things
From birth until we depart, every moment we experience marks the path we choose to pursue in seeking happiness and giving meaning to our existence. It’s a path made of daily steps, measured, small and light, but also of strides, leaps, and sudden changes.
Setting out again is blowing away the weights that have accumulated once more, to find freshness and renewed energy—that strange sense of peace that feels almost unreal, but also simply to observe, touch, and feel, because perceiving is more important than “forming an opinion,” judging, or thinking the world is as others have described it. It’s about re-learning to let go, remembering that we have little control over things, that each day something falls away and something is created anew.
We venture back outside, into nature, to extend our lives a little longer, but above all to make them more intense, to walk the streets, circle around houses, and change our perspective, paying attention to details, marvelling again and again, surrounding ourselves with beauty, reaching toward the sublime. Without hurry, listening to every heartbeat, every breath, grateful to be alive, for the feelings, emotions, and thoughts that turn toward the extraordinary.
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A Piedi Per Il Mondo
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