I’ve just completed a day with great people who have become an important part of my pilgrimage.

We’ve been able to share important things from our lives which are helpful to one another – the result of being part of a conversation with purpose towards the future.

Erich Fromm has it that every encounter with another Human changes us this way or that.  What is imperceptible in the single encounter would be more clear to us if repeated many times.  This idea connects with the mirror response we find in Humans, whereby we mimic others in order to connect – we are a connecting species.

Pilgrimage also brings us into contact with ideas and places which also change us this way or that.

There are creative and generous people, ideas, and places, we can be open to and changed by.

There are also trivial and wasteful people, ideas, and places we are careful to influence with creativity and generosity.

And there are all kinds of people in-between.*

In your pilgrimages, be open to as many of the first kind of people as you are able to, and be as wisely generous as possible with all the others.

(*Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’ makes a great pilgrimage read.)