Day 35 - Asimochori to Karditsa: 19.2 miles (37,804 steps)


See all posts from category: Daily diary, Reflections on the journey

May 28, 2020
Distance: 19.2 miles (Total: 399.3 miles) Steps 37,804 (Total: 748,290)

“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. “ — Ecclesiastes 9:11

One of the frequent sights I see along the edge of roads in Greece, is that of a tortoise waking to make a ‘dash’ for it from one side of the road to the other, despite all the evidence to the fact that he/she just won’t make it. Why do they persist? Why can’t they just rationally think, “you know life ain’t all that bad on this side—I will make my living here.’ It could of course be something to do with the fact that tortoises can live until the ripe old age of 150 years and they may just wake up one morning and think to themselves, “You know what? I have had a good and full life, and I know that life ain’t too bad at all on this side of the road, but I would rather trade the additional fifty years of life for the sense of pursuing a dream of life on the other side – feeling alive, paradoxically, in the moment when the prospect of death and becoming a well worn bump on the highway of life are statistically the more likely outcome.”  So despite the fact that I have rescued several courageous tortoise souls from pursuing their dream, I do find there is something in that to which we can relate.

Of course, to think of the tortoise, is to think of Aesop’s famous fable of the imaginary race between the hare and the tortoise, which is often quoted and its true meaning debated.  Aesop was, of course, Greek and lived around 500-600 BC.  What I didn’t realise, is that this first great story teller was in fact a slave. Aesop told hundreds of these moral tales which were deemed to be of great value for the moral education of children especially. A selection of Aesop’s Fables was one of the first books ever printed in English, by William Caxton in 2020, and tales such as The Tortoise and the Hare, The North Wind and the Sun, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, have an enduring popularity because although the tale is fictitious, the lesson contains a gem of truth.

As I look at the tortoise, I often think of the walk and the cause on which I am embarked. We live in an age of 24 hour media and 24 hour government by press release, in which image is all and message is less. Where the emphasis is always on new laws and initiatives rather than better implementation of existing laws and previous initiatives.  Where announcements are rushed out and results are designed not to be found out. Against this backdrop, it may seem a bit naive or odd to be embarking on a walk for truce; after all we all know how this should be done—get Bono to do a photo op with Seb Coe and David Cameron and the subsequent media splash can claim its ‘job done’—well to a point. ‘To a point’, because what matters is not the truce itself, but what the truce allows you to do; the provision of humanitarian aid in conflict zones, and to highlight a congenital weakness in our understanding of international affairs – our fixation in believing that violence can achieve the lasting justice and security we seek.

For these reasons, perhaps having a fifty-year-old Tory politician, who no-body has ever heard of walking through Europe over the course of a year, is the perfect choice.  Because it might allow the decision makers to grapple with the complexities of the issues, rather than the simplicity of the images – and the tortoise, and the Tory, might yet make it to the other side of the road…….

 

 

 

 



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