On Being Unfinished

Two years ago, I sat in the dining hall in the pilgrim hostel in Roncesvalles, Spain. For many pilgrims on the Camino Francés, this marks the completion of their first day’s walk, having just crossed the Pyrenees. For my group on this occasion, though, it was just the opposite–we were celebrating (and mourning) our last walk, and preparing for our imminent departure.

As we sat down together for our last formal meeting as pilgrims, I paused, dwelling again on the appropriate note to strike. I had avoided taking students on the route we had followed, the Via Podiensis through France, for years because of this moment. Unlike the other pilgrimages I walk with students, we wouldn’t finish our walk in the sacred destination at the end of the pilgrim’s road. On the contrary, we only reached the midpoint, walking 500 miles to still be 500 miles from the finish line. How would students feel about that incomplete experience?

Sitting in Roncesvalles, though, we were all giddy from a magnificent, unforgettable day. The sun shined brightly as we climbed through sparkling green hills. As new pilgrims labored uphill, finding their footing at a measured pace, we slalomed through in a seemingly effortless flow, reveling in the strength built up over our past four weeks. Students in the group who had only seen themselves in comparison to their faster peers suddenly faced a revelation–they were some of the strongest, fittest walkers on the mountain that day, and so they sang, and skipped, and bounced through wild horses and sheep.

I don’t know if it was the giddiness talking or not, but I was struck at that moment by an insight that was new to me, at least. Instead of bemoaning the fact that we wouldn’t reach Santiago de Compostela, I trumpeted the special quality of being unfinished. Sometimes, when one completes a major project or task, the initial afterglow is soon displaced by a shiftless emptiness, a lull that’s hard to shake. When it’s over, it becomes lodged firmly in the past, to be encountered solely in memory. An unfinished pilgrimage, though, remains ongoing; it’s a burr poking the ankle, a nagging reminder of its presence and persistence. We tend to think of that as a negative; there’s a virtue in completing tasks. However–I reasoned, as I thought my way through this on that night–an unfinished pilgrimage becomes a companion through the weeks and months and years that follow, an unlived possibility to be anticipated.

So often in life, it’s easier to deliver a message than to receive it.

My walk across the USA will remain unfinished, for some unknown number of years. When I resumed the walk in Ohio in May, I did so with the recognition that it was a gamble. Cases were trending downward and I jumped onto what I hoped was the front-end of the larger denouement. Five days in Ohio, though, proved alarming. By the time I arrived in Logan, Ohio, I had already concluded the walk was done. Cases were skyrocketing in nearby Columbus; mask usage was already heavily politicized; multiple itinerary complications were looming in the upcoming stages. And the reality is, I couldn’t push myself through what I have to push myself through on this walk while consumed with ambivalence. The walk is often fun and rewarding, but it’s also grueling, and I rely on mental resoluteness far more than physical strength.

When I initially suspended the walk in March, I returned home and transitioned seamlessly into that more sedentary existence. I was at peace. What could I do? A once-in-a-lifetime (hopefully!) pandemic had struck and we all had to accept sacrifices. After this second interruption, though, I struggled much more to come to terms with the outcome. I wasn’t despondent or wrecked by any means, but instead I just couldn’t really face it. Over these last two months, I’ve avoided it almost entirely. Haven’t looked at a pictures. Haven’t gone back through the blog. I’ve dropped the ball on some communications. The walk, the goal of this year, the project for which I took a year off of work, would fall well short of completion. It sucks.

And instead, I’ve watched a lot of cable news. This also sucks. My hope in walking across the USA was to rekindle some sense of hope in where we’re headed, to see the country through the lived experiences of Americans from coast to coast. And instead, I caught myself infected with impotent rage, disheartened and angered by anti-scientific obstinacy and intellectual dishonesty.

Most discouraging to me, though, is the degree to which cable news allows empty rhetoric to override a shared sentiment. As someone who has focused extensively on the orchard’s worth of low-hanging fruit in the realm of criminal justice reform, it’s appalling to see how the discourse has developed surrounding “defunding” the police. Conservative media has translated this into a blow against public safety. The Trump campaign has predictably produced a fear-mongering and dishonest ad out of it. I’ve actually been far more disdainful of liberal media, like MSNBC, failing to actually unpack what this slogan means. It took weeks for it to receive any serious discussion and the implications remain vague to most Americans. There’s little visible effort made by either side to educate and analyze the complex issues bound up in a three-word rallying cry.

This is discouraging because the rhetorical gap distracts from a ton of common ground. Ever since I started teaching a class on criminal justice, I’ve gained significant insight into policing in Portland. My students have spoken with a strikingly broad sample of Portland police. They’ve also interviewed a wide range of constituencies affected by police, particularly the homeless. Their findings are consistent with the reporting encountered in most every major media source, and here’s the key takeaway: police officers, as much as anyone else, recognize that it’s a problem that they’re the ones tasked with being on the front line of a growing mental health and homelessness crisis. Many police departments have strived to improve their training, to prepare themselves to better deal with vulnerable populations, but it’s simply not what they were designed to do. It’s bad for everyone.

Police around the country would cheer for more abundant social services that shift responsibilities for the mentally ill, the homeless, and vulnerable youth to trained professionals. Why would anyone oppose that?

But, as we do, we politicize good policy that most Americans would otherwise embrace. Many Americans, outraged by the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, and many other acts of police brutality, have rightly demanded a broad set of reforms. Understandably, this isn’t just framed as necessary changes, but also in punitive language. It’s not about “Appropriately Funding Social Services,” but rather about sticking it to the cops.

The overwhelming majority of Americans have a shared sentiment here, agreeing that the criminal justice system is racially discriminatory, that we need more safeguards against police misconduct, and that improved police training is necessary. And yet, only a quarter agree that police funding should change.

There is far, far more common ground here than one would suspect, given political discourse in the media. Sure, the devil’s in the details, and disagreements are inevitable when moving from the conceptual to specific policy, but if we could start from shared beliefs, instead of demonizing the other, we could actually channel more of our energy into building something better, instead of just focusing on scoring twitter points.

I’ve never felt more optimistic about what we could be than when I was speaking with a Trump supporter in Kansas who expressed his support for Mexican immigrants, who he had come to know by living and working in proximity to them. And I’ve never felt more pessimistic and angry than when I’ve sat watching cable news, where my own prejudices received extensive nourishment. We have to break out of our ideological silos if we’re going to do better.

For now, at least, I’ll have to cling to that lesson and carry it forward, at least in my own life, as I endure this final march towards the November election, and the inevitable mess that will follow. Look past the rhetoric. Find the shared, underlying values. That’s the foundation to build upon.

We are supposed to be striving to build a more perfect union. And that’s a process that is inherently unfinished, littered with false summits. It would be nice to arrive at the destination now, but I suppose it’s going to take at least a few more years.
As a post-script: On the day I returned home from the second bail-out, I grabbed Chinese take-out on the way back to my place. After numbly shoveling an excessive amount of Kung Pao Tofu in my mouth, I cracked open the fortune cookie. The message: “Take that trip you’ve been wanting to take.” Fucking fortune cookies.