DAY 100 - REFLECTIONS ON THE JOURNEY SO FAR

29th July, 2011

Sarajevo
Total: 955.2 miles–1,843,491 step

Between the idea
And the reality . . .
Between the conception
And the creation . . .
Falls the Shadow.
—T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

How to you begin to assess the effectiveness of an action? It can only be by measuring outcomes against objectives. But what were those objectives? And what if they were to have changed in form during the course of the action?
The most frequent question that I am asked on this walk is, “Why?”

Is it one man’s desperate attempt to rediscover the true meaning of the Olympic Games and see it used as a means of peace and reconciliation? Is it a battle of will with a government which, I support, and yet, as it stands, plans to propose the Olympic Truce resolution to the United Nations General Assembly which it has no intention of implementing itself? Is it a burden, a calling that consumes your waking hours and resting dreams? Is it a desire to be the change I want to see in others? Is it one last throw of the dice for a political ‘has been’ to achieve something worthwhile? Is it an ego trip? A mid-life crisis…….

The answer that my mum will passionately attribute to me is the best of all motives, others will attribute the worst and most will have no opinion or interest at all. More importantly for this walk, I have found that at different times all of the above motives have been true. And that motives, like the emotions, oscillate through changing daily circumstance. Reality is sanity and there is safety to be found there.

This is true:
I have walked nearly a 1000 miles, and the romance of walking began to drain from my first step at Olympia and by the time I reached the southern suburbs of Athens, it had evaporated altogether.
When I contemplate the next 500 miles of walking through deserted mountain areas of Bosnia and Croatia, I feel a chill wind whistling through my soul. London seems further away than when I started.

This is also true:
I have had the opportunity to speak about the truce directly to hundreds of people along the way and indirectly to hundreds of thousands through the media and the web.
I have had significant high-level meetings with political leaders in five countries and all have pledged not only to sign the truce, but also to come up with specific ways of it being implemented.
As a result of a question by my great friend, Gary Streeter MP on 29 June, 2011 and an enthusiastic response by the prime minister declaring the Olympic Truce as an ‘historic opportunity’, the wheels of policy formulation have begun to creak slowly into action.

I have been tested to the limits of my physical endurance. That I have experienced a vulnerability, mostly through lack of accommodation, and sometimes because of it, coupled with a fear, mostly through an inability to communicate in a common language (and not just with dogs and snakes), that I have never experienced before in my fifty years. That at the same time I have experienced extraordinary acts of kindness from complete strangers. And, that I have been privileged to encounter and learn from some amazing and inspiring people.
My knowledge and understanding of the history of our civilisation, chiefly in Athens, and the underlying causes of conflict have been immeasurably deepened, chiefly in Sarajevo.

I have been sustained and encouraged by the actions and prayers of a small group of friends and family, without whose help I know I would not have made it this far. And in return for which I would like to tell them to rush out and use everything you’ve got to buy/short Telefonica O2 shares, as when my mobile phone bills for the past few months are factored in to second quarter earnings, the share price will go through the roof. I then hope to borrow against a share of your windfall to help pay the 02 phone bills. Nonsense you say, not so, hedge funds have been doing it for years—what could possibly go wrong?

Ultimately, that the past 100 days may not yet have resulted in the desired change of approach of the government towards the Olympic Truce, but that they have already begun to result in a desired change in me and so the true purpose, motive and meaning of the walk begins to take form out of the ‘shadow.’