Today’s Navigate the Chaos question is “How often do you challenge yourself to do something extraordinary?”
People who navigate the chaos often wind up doing something extraordinary with their lives.
At 24 years of age Bryan Steward walked the 500-mile path in northern Spain known as the Camino de Santiago from the Pyrenees Mountains to Santiago de Compostela.
The path is a common spiritual journey for many people. The Camino isn’t known as the toughest walking path in the world. In outdoorsy terms, it’s actually comparatively tame. But its spiritual component is rather legendary. There’s something almost holy about the idea of walking the Camino.
Quite a number of trekkers refer to it as a pilgrimage. What’s extraordinary about this ordinary person is that Steward has Becker muscular dystrophy, or BMD. It’s a degenerative condition that slowly takes over the voluntary muscles. One day, and Steward is under no delusions about it, BMD will put him in a wheelchair.
Just before he set off for what would be his 46-day journey across northern Spain, Steward posted a blog through the Muscular Dystrophy Association website that sums up the blend of optimism and realism he espouses. It was titled “Walking 500 Miles While I Still Can,” and features moments like this: “Knowing that this condition will most likely put me in a wheelchair one day makes me want to stay active and do all I can do while I am still able…My decision to walk the Camino came from my desire to push myself to the edge of my abilities, to explore new cultures, experience nature and become more spiritually enlightened.”
By all accounts Steward is an ordinary person who accomplished something extraordinary. As Edmund Hillary noted "People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.”
How often do you challenge yourself to do something extraordinary?