Walking in Venice is like Sitting in Meditation

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When we asked people who’ve spent time here in Venice “What should we do while there?” they invariably said ‘Get lost. Just walk around and lose yourself in the streets.”

It’s easy to do. Only the larger walkways end in bridges that cross the lattice of canals. The impossibly smaller streets end only in three seaweed covered steps down to the green blue water and a metal ring for tying up a boat.

Turns upon turns, upon turns upon turns. Alleypathbridgecourtyardcanal. Dead ends, backtracking, arches that reveal new pathways.

You head in one direction and if you take the road less (tourist) traveled you are bound to get lost.

I’m taking this trip-time to recommit to my meditation practice. I’m sitting twice daily. I’m finding the two activities - walking in Venice and sitting to be oddly similar.

You start out prepared, confident, clear. Then, invariably, you lose you’re way. You wander, not even conscious that you’re lost, for quite some time.

You come back again, and then again, and again to your breath, to mindfulness. You come back again and again to the your path to Saint Mark’s Sq. or a church or a museum.

You walk, sure you know where you are, and then realize you’re heading away from the Grand Canal not toward it.

The familiar becomes unfamiliar. The known suddenly becomes unknown.

You are sure you’re lost and then suddenly the same walls and cobblestones you’ve been looking at for the last 20 paces/the last 10 breaths IS a landmark you suddenly recognize.

A veil is lifted, the clouds part. You see where you are.

And then, quite as suddenly, you’re muddled again.

And then there’s the light. Occasionally you are blessed with seeing a light. A light that suffuses everything, emanating from the water below and the sky above, and suddenly (if briefly) the brick, your body, the canal, the mind is illuminated and the present feels like the past, the past like the present. And you are here, now…in Venice.