First, a small flashback…
Back when Line and I were still living in Denmark and touring Germany for extended periods, we noticed an interesting phenomenon. Life on tour is chaotic: constantly changing venues, new people, new challenges. No matter how much you try to plan, unexpected things will always happen – it’s impossible to avoid when you’re constantly on the move and dealing with people.
What we often experienced after 2–3 weeks on the road was a kind of shift in the brain’s strategy for handling chaos. It felt as if it “gave up” trying to control everything, almost as if it “realized” that when your surrounding reality is in constant flux and cannot be reduced to a formula, it doesn’t make sense to rely on the same strategy you use to manage a relatively repetitive daily life.
When this shift set in during our tours, we both found that we became better at improvising in chaotic circumstances – and at accepting outcomes, even when they didn’t match our original plans. In a way, you could call this a “sensible” response from the brain, because in chaotic environments it is simply more effective than clinging to the illusion of control.
But we also experienced a curious “side effect” of this shift: a deeper change in perspective that could almost be described as spiritual. With a greater acceptance of how things are, unforeseen events suddenly transformed from being unwelcome into something that felt more meaningful. Not that we could always see what the meaning was, but they felt less like intrusions.
We found ourselves trusting more in the idea that there is a deeper meaning behind things, even when they appear most chaotic – in other words, feeling as if we were being carried forward by fate.
Whether this is “just” the brain’s way of making sense of chaos, or whether one actually comes into contact with a deeper, spiritual truth, is of course a matter of interpretation and temperament. If it feels true, is it then true?
What I do know is that once this feeling sets in, I have no doubt – and if I want to reconnect with it, I imagine that three months of walking is a good place to start.