After saying that everything becomes or, more humanly, walks, according to its own nature, it becomes appropriate to examine what a person’s walking can be. In my experience, I consider essential following a methodology of walking, if we really want to cultivate a spiritual experience, which also seeks the possibility of growing continuously and communicating with others. Certainly, even living for the day allows for an experience; the choice of organizing a path or not may depend on the type of experience one wishes to pursue and on the vicissitudes that until now we have been able to appreciate. A good path, before setting goals, simply takes note of the point where we are and the directions we are already moving toward.

The methodology proposed here should in any case serve only as a suggestion, a stimulus for everyone to acquire his own personal ability to design for himself not only a path, but also the best method to draw up and continually rework a life project. Maybe those who, at the beginning, without experience, will feel lost, could follow step by step the indications presented here, but later personalization will always be necessary, otherwise the very meaning of these pages would be misunderstood. The exposition is explained here with a practical organizational hypothesis of a path.

 

In this organizational hypothesis we start from a higher level of definition of a general sense for our life; this formulation is for a temporary start and therefore it shouldn’t need too much commitment; it will only start the work, later we can revise it. Let us suppose that the imagined meaning is formulated in these terms: “I want to live to know the most beautiful things”. At this point we have already filled a first part of a written sheet of paper, which will work as an orientation. It has to be written, the same way when we make a building plan. This way we have a reference point and eliminate the problems of forgetfulness or too vague memories. This writing work could arouse concerns about prying eyes; for this problem we can think about solutions to make what we write not too explicit: abbreviations, symbols, custom words, etc.; at the same time, our document should not be protected and coded so far as to make it difficult for ourselves to understand it quickly. It must necessarily be simple and clear enough to make an assessment possible at a glance, to favor the formation of simple ideas about our path and about ourselves.

 

Now let’s go back to our hypothetical test. We have drawn a first section of the sheet:

 

 

A subsequent section may contain a phrase that in this period of my life is working as an orientation, may be based on some important situations that have arisen. Here too we make a simple example:

 

 

We have therefore determined in our paper some basic criteria on how we want to live, one general and another one related to our most immediate period of life. The content of the sentences itself shows that the first has a more general value, while the second draws attention to a more particular aspect of existence that, once imprinted in our behavior or in our mind for a certain period, or once another sentence is thought to be more effective and suitable for the moment, can be deleted from the sheet.

Now we must ask ourselves about doing: what do I want to do in my life? To discover our real possibilities we can use a method by exclusion, which will require some patient but not useless work. We will write down a list of all the things that can be done in life; obviously it will be a list of a certain length. A brief example:

eating, playing music, working, praying, having fun, studying, visiting, watching TV, going to meetings, celebrating, listening to music, thinking, repairing, walking, going to school, making phone calls, paying taxes, ordering, chatting, relaxing, doing politics, paperwork, writing, organizing the path, helping the children, talking with the children, playing, learning, getting informed, singing, and so on.

 

Once this endless list is drawn up (but we might notice, perhaps with regret, that it is not really infinite as we expected), we will have to form a ranking. To do this, we will begin with the first written term and will compare it with the second one: the one of the two that will be the most important, meaningful, achievable, will be compared with the third, and so on, until finally we will obtain the thing in our life that is the most important to do and therefore to put in the first place. The result can still be corrected if, in the meantime, we will remember another thing that is even more important. We may even face moments of perplexity due to balance issues: is it more important eating or working? To solve these problems, some criteria will be used regarding the work being done. We can decide, for example: since I am studying the things to do in relation to the meaning of my life, for now I choose to ignore the aspect of eating and I keep in mind working only; later I will have a lifetime to review and correct everything. What is important now is to have a start and a starting point. Thus we are going to understand that the real work that in this method proves fruitful is that of continuous and patient revision and correction. Furthermore, someone might think of things that are too general, for example that the most important thing to do in life is loving. However, we must not forget that this type of important things was thought of for the first line of the sheet, that one about the meaning to give to our life. In this third section we must instead leave apart the basic guidelines, since they have already been written, and think of concrete things only. Now we can also sense that often in our lives or in our discussions we make so much confusion because we confuse the basic orientations with the concrete things to do.

 

Once we have identified the most important concrete activity to do, that is the one to put in the first place, we will do the same work to identify the one to put to the second place, having the patience to start again the comparisons, excluding only the term that now has been put in first place. Based on how the eliminatory work will proceed, we will evaluate how many degrees it is appropriate to consider: four, six, ten… At the end we could end up with such a ranking:

 

 

which will be inserted in our plan:

 

 

 

This list does not expose the only things we do; it will only work as a reference point when we need to think about how it is better to use our time, or for other indicative purposes.

 

At this point, we will be concerned about our self-formation, considering, in particular, those things that school has not taught us. Since we cannot have, during all our life, teachers at our complete disposal, we need to resort to the most accessible means: first of all reading, then media, meetings with different people, etc.

Some things might coincide with the previous list of things to do, but for now we neglect this problem. We will think later about operating those choices and corrections that will serve to streamline and simplify the pathway.

Since the time of life that we can devote to reading is very little, compared to all things that in the whole world we would have to read, we will have to make a decisive, severe selection, with the same method used to determine the things to do.

It should also be borne in mind that we cannot devote our life to keep ourselves up-to-date with everything important that others do or write about, eventually coming to no longer finding time to live a personal experience. Information and communication cannot guarantee for originality; they have to be programmed as components, among others, of the project of walking, dictated by experience and not as absolute needs.

We must therefore have the patience to draw up a list of all the things that in life is possible to study or deepen, to gradually acquire a certain competence about them, to build up a formation of ourselves, including even those things on which one becomes an expert not only through reading, but especially with practice, for example sport, an art, a hobby. Compared to the list of things to be done, the latter differs because it is aimed rather at those activities that form a well educated person. One could think that working forms us as well, but here we are dealing with activities chosen precisely to form ourselves: would we ever have freely chosen our job for the sole purpose of providing us a formation? If the answer is no, then our job does not fall into this category. Furthermore, reading is of the utmost importance in this field. To draw up a list of all the disciplines that can be studied and the types of books or magazines that can be read, we can help with lists found in dictionaries and encyclopedias, or we can even think of all the subjects that are studied in all types of school. We will help ourselves by all means, putting everything together, for a list that must be as complete as possible. As usual, we know that our work can always be revised, improved even further. A brief example:

 

 

We will identify the usual ranking by exclusions and a scheme like the following one will come out:

 

 

to be added to our sheet:

 

 

Working	News
Relaxation	Philosophy
Visiting	Religion
Reading	History
Meditating

 

This scheme reminds us that now being interested in other disciplines is useless for us, not because they are not important, but because we cannot read everything, due to the short time of our life, and therefore we must make decisive choices. This does not mean that we will feel authorized to hermetically close ourselves to any other aspect of culture, but only that we will not dedicate continuous time to it, like we will do instead for the other fields. Under each of the items concerning formation, it will be useful to write the concrete means with which we wish to cultivate it. For example, under the heading “News” we could add the magazines that we intend to read, or to which we want to subscribe; under the heading “Philosophy” we can write down the title of the book we are reading, also writing the date by which we think we can finish it, taking into account our possibilities. Next to the things to do, we can add the time to dedicate to them. Under the heading “Meditating” we can add the places where we can go to do it in nice ways, etc .:

 

I want to live to know the most beautiful things
Treat others with affection
Working	News
Relaxing	TV news
Visiting (1 x week at least)	New York Times (1 x week at least)
reading (5 min. a day at least)	Philosophy
Meditating (1 hr a week at least)	The philosophers (begun on 3.02.2019; to read by 3.03.2020)
(In my room – On Everest – among the trees of the equatorial forest – At the sea -In the blue Cave)	Religion   History (next summer or years)

 

Once this work is completed, we could finally add a weekly timetable, similar to the class schedule that students write in their school diary, to have under our eyes how we spend our time day by day. Perhaps there will be a period in which we will feel a need to write down also the time we dedicate even to daily meals; then maybe that period will pass and we will only note our most important activities.

A separate entry in this whole scheme could refer to the time to be devoted to the research itself about the methodology of walking, the paths for creativity and originality. Like the way a manager can plan the search for ever new strategies, to keep up in the competitive market, for us it is a matter of keeping up with the need not to become stagnating, passive.

Once this work is done, all that remains is letting time pass and looking at the paper quite often. Soon we will notice improvements that can be made and we will need soon the patience to tear it up and rewrite it, revised and corrected. We will have to learn to never be discouraged by the fact of having to continually revise our path: this tearing and rewriting can become, without any need to feel frustrated, even a daily habit. On the contrary, often the feeling of impossibility we face when we run up a project can become a very important provocative tool, it can serve as a stimulus to look for other possibilities, other ways of seeing and doing.

Later, perhaps, we will feel the need to use more than one sheet, but then we will realize that too many details prevent us from grasping the global plan and then we will strive to streamline and synthesize. We will also realize that our sheet leads us to rethink the meaning of our life and therefore we will have to try, from time to time, to re-express it in better terms. The programmed reading will begin to bear its fruits and we will understand that we can see things in a lot of other different ways. Life will begin to be a fruitful pathway in which we will try to add our projecting collaboration to what life, or God, if we are believers, already gives us to live. We will realize that we can even help others to orient themselves in life and we will be able to teach them how to organize themselves a pathway, taking advantage of our experience. Then we will discuss something, basing on the path of each one, and we will enrich each other: this will be communication. There will be no need to worry about a lot of things, because we will write on the paper that we cannot get to those and they are postponed, for example, to the following year; the written sheet guarantees us that we won’t forget.

A criterion to keep in mind in this work will be that the project thus organized must be the best mediation between simply taking note of what is already taking place in our life and what we instead would like to achieve. Walking is first of all listening to our own existence and then also attempting to introduce guidelines, works and see how they work.