[Creative Nonfiction] In Search of the Missing Door

In Search of the Missing Door

by David Box

I have no idea how a creative project should behave. Does it begin with a clear objective?

Mine began with an insatiable curiosity about the human condition and a walk.

Of late I have accumulated a life coaching qualification, a growing library of psychology and philosophy books, a half-finished manuscript, two Caminos, several competing theories about what the manuscript is actually about, and what can only be described as a missing door.

The door matters because I have a growing suspicion it understands the project better than I do - it has developed an irritating habit of opening onto another question just as I think I’ve finally caught up with it.

The fact that I cannot quite explain what the project is about may be one reason the manuscript remains unfinished.

At first, I thought I was writing a book. Then perhaps a framework. For a while I wondered whether it was a Camino, a keynote, or something else entirely. Eventually I realised I was simply chasing a question that had become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Each explanation felt convincing for a while before another door quietly appeared beside the one that I thought I was following. By the time I’d reached it, the first had already begun to close. I had mistaken a threshold for a destination.

Meanwhile I just kept on putting one foot in front of the other.

Eventually I became interested in life coaching. That decision can probably be traced back to a French pilgrim named Guillaume whom I met on the Camino de Santiago. Somewhere during a conversation on a dusty trail in northern Spain, he suggested I might make a good coach.

The annoying thing was that Guillaume turned out to be right.

What surprised me most about coaching was that it was less about changing people than about listening carefully enough for them to discover where they were already heading.

At roughly the same time another Frenchman entered the story. This one was the philosopher Frédéric Gros. His book, A Philosophy of Walking, found me when I was already becoming interested in pilgrimage. Gros proposed the apparently simple idea that walking is not merely a way of getting somewhere. It can also be a way of thinking, noticing and understanding.

The timing was unfortunate.

Had I ignored Guillaume and never read Gros, I might have finished the book already.

Instead, I found myself wandering further into the territory. Every path seemed to connect with every other path.

The Camino, meanwhile, remained quietly present in the background. My first walk across Spain gave me space away from the noise of everyday life. My second taught me more about connection, listening and the stories people carry with them.

One observation refused to leave me.

Perhaps it was not even limited to the Camino.

Perhaps the transformation was not limited to any pilgrimage.

Perhaps walking itself was doing more work than I had realised.

What had once felt only slightly unhinged no longer seemed to describe it. Somewhere along the way the door had broken away.

The image that comes to mind is not flattering. The whole door is now floating away, somewhere in a torrent of books, conversations and half-developed ideas, drifting towards Iguazu Falls with a map that becomes less accurate with every kilometre.

Every time I thought I had caught up with the project, another door seemed to open just ahead.

The manuscript remained patiently where I had left it. The door never did.

Occasionally I wondered whether my missing door was never missing at all.

Perhaps it was simply collecting companions.

One marked Camino.

Another Coaching.

Then Campbell.

Jung.

Coelho.

Walking.

Meaning.

Elderhood.

At first, I would probably have tried to recover the original door.

Then I suspect I would have realised I no longer remembered which one it was.

Every pilgrim knows this feeling. Somewhere between the next village, the next conversation, the next hill and the next blister, you forget that you are on a journey at all.

Perhaps that is what has happened to me.

David Box is an Australian writer, life coach and pilgrim who has spent much of the past decade, or maybe a lifetime, exploring how walking changes people. After living on three continents, visiting dozens of countries, working more jobs than most people would believe, and calling 33 places home, he is writing Walking Back to Yourself, a book about pilgrimage, transition and the questions that refuse to stay still. He writes at Power of Pilgrimage: https://powerofpilgrimage.com

This piece was written in response to the theme Creative Side Quests.