We Are the Very Thing We Are Looking For
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
(William Stafford)
Years ago, while working for a nonprofit startup in Johannesburg as part of my MBA program, I was wrestling with that same thread—though I didn’t know it yet. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. There was a constant undercurrent of unease, fed by a belief that the answers were “out there,” waiting to be revealed through achievements: the right career, the right relationship, the right qualification, the right ….something.
I was due to fly back to Madrid after some travels in South Africa when a friend invited me for a drink. At the bar, I met someone who had just returned from walking the Camino de Santiago. The mud on her boots had barely dried as she spoke of her experience. One thing she said in particular has stayed with me ever since,
‘Walking on your own through an ancient forest is a spiritual experience.’
I remember feeling an immediate quickening within me as I heard her say these words. Yes, I thought, walking in the wild is a spiritual experience. It wasn’t the sort of conversation I was used to having in my life back then, but I felt it instantly as a truth.
The next day, I changed my flight and decided to walk the Camino myself. I didn’t know exactly why, only that it felt right. I was following the thread.
That decision—putting to one side the deadlines and expectations of my MBA program to walk across northern Spain—changed everything. It was a quiet revolution, a moment where I began to see myself clearly for the first time.
The Camino was my first real experience of slowing down and paying attention. As I walked, I found myself in the company of the natural world, which neither judged me nor expected anything from me. I met strangers who shared their truths with a disarming openness, and in turn, I felt no need to filter my own.
Though I would struggle to articulate what it is exactly, the thread I encountered back then is the same one I follow today. It keeps growing stronger and clearer with time.
I believe what we are all searching for, consciously or otherwise, is our thread and I believe the thread is inseparable to us.
We are the very thing we are looking for.
The Camino helped me to realise that all the things I was pursuing—joy, clarity, peace—were within me all along.
We spend so much time believing that happiness is out there, waiting to be found in a career, a relationship, a material accomplishment. We chase the mirage, waiting to arrive somewhere or become someone, only to find that at every corner we are left still waiting and searching.
What if we are the very thing we are looking for?
The truth is, the profound joy we seek doesn’t come from what we accumulate or achieve. It comes from being present with our immediate reality and following our thread.
Walking in the wild; chatting with a good friend; playing the sport we love; doing meaningful work - these moments of connection essentially mirror our wholeness. They point us back to ourselves and show us who we really are. They are glimpses of the self meeting itself. They dissolve the imagined separation between us and the world, and we realise: we were never lacking and we can never be lacking.
We are the instrument through which we experience this life and the more we attune to ourselves the more we experience our fullness of being arising from the simple truth of our existence. In that fullness, there is no need for anything more. There is no great arrival, no final destination.
We are the very thing we are looking for.
So hold the thread. Trust it. It won’t lead you astray.