Sunday Gratitude: A Walk, a Wash, and a Wake-Up Call
- Rich Honiball
- 6 minutes ago
- 6 min read
On Sunday, I headed out before the heat set in - a 10-kilometer walk, a 10-pound pack on my back, and a plan mapped out by an app. I like to think I’m training for something bigger. But some of the hardest lessons find you in the simplest routines.
Each step feels more intentional lately. I’m not just logging miles, but tracking my pace, adding weight, timing each stretch, and tweaking my route. AllTrails records my progress with satisfying precision, and I’m looking to improve every time out.
The mission, for me, is deeply personal - a commitment to better health, but also to something beyond the physical. I’m preparing for the Camino de Santiago, a walk that’s part endurance test, part spiritual journey. That’s the story I tell myself as I tighten my straps, feeling the weight settle between my shoulders. It’s not just about moving forward, but about moving forward with purpose.
Some days, the walk is meditative. My mind drifts through neighborhoods, the busy roads, into the shade of cut-through trails, past the local coffee shop, across new shortcuts that feel like small, private victories. Today, adding a detour through the woods, a road less traveled. Muddy, more resistance, greater satisfaction. Each adjustment to the route is a reminder that growth comes from exploring new ways, even in familiar territory. The morning is quiet but determined, much like my intentions.
The Shower Scene: Confronting Comfort
Back home, I’m met with a cold drink from my wife, not a beer, but some kind of recovery concoction she swears by. Let’s not tell her, but it works. I head to the shower, already feeling the fatigue settle into my legs.
A key part of this journey - one I didn’t anticipate - is learning how to lighten the load. Packing for a business trip, I’ve always prided myself on managing with just a carry-on, even if it’s bursting at the seams. Packing for vacation, I prepare for every “what if,” always erring on the side of too much, just in case. But now, with a 48-liter backpack and the Camino ahead, I’m learning to cut down to the essentials - only what I can carry, only what I truly need. Fewer changes of clothes, more hand-washing and line-drying, night after night. So after my walk, I start the routine: testing which garments make the cut, which ones earn their spot.
I use a bar of lavender soap - simple, practical, the kind made for both body and fabric. One by one, I wash the sweat from my socks, trail pants, shirt, and underwear, scrubbing out the miles by hand under hot water. I wring them out, hang them on the back porch to dry, just as I’ll need to do on the Camino next year, or even next month at the Reading Festival with my daughter.
About halfway through, the novelty wears off. I’m used to tossing everything into the washing machine without a second thought - no fuss, no effort. The tug of comfort is real, the temptation to give up on my little experiment. After all, the machine is just a few steps away.
But I force myself to finish. Partly because I know I’ll need the practice, but mostly because there’s a lesson somewhere in this minor inconvenience - something about preparation, about patience, and about what it means to choose discomfort when comfort is always within reach.
The Mental Detour: Copan Ruinas, Honduras
About halfway through the shower, just as the novelty of hand-washing my clothes wears thin and I’m ready to just toss everything in the washing machine, my mind takes a detour. It’s not the first time this has happened, but today it hits harder - probably because I’m already tired, and because of how easy it would be to take the easy way out.
I flash back to a few weeks ago, to a village outside Copan Ruinas, Honduras.
A population of around 200, mainly women and children, in makeshift shacks perched on the side of a mountain, next to - or more like - within the city garbage dump. The air there is thick with heat and dust, laced with the sharp smell of decay. Children, many barefoot, most in hand-me-downs, walk miles down the mountain to attend school, then trek back up at day’s end. There’s no running water, no plumbing, while most of us fret when there is no air conditioning. For many families, survival depends on what they can salvage from the dump - bottles, scraps, anything with value - in a country where seventy percent of the population is below the poverty line.
The day we visited, volunteers with big hearts and bigger resolve were delivering food and water to the families. There’s a system: in exchange for making sure their kids go to school, a family receives enough to get by for the month. The leader of this particular local organization, a quiet man with a determined soul, tells me what their real needs are: running water, working sewage, and education for their children. That’s it - just the basics we rarely think twice about.
While I was trying to process how difficult life was for this village, I remember the small moments of joy in that place: the daughter of one of the returning volunteers, blowing bubbles, a little girl in a donated princess dress spinning in the dust, laughter over a handful of stickers. Another young woman, also a volunteer, took Polaroids of the kids, handing them out so each could keep a picture of themselves - something tangible, a memory they could hold onto. The smiles were genuine, a flicker of joy in the midst of hardship.
Standing in my own shower, I realize how different my discomfort is from theirs. My “load” is voluntary, my fatigue self-imposed, and comfort is always just a step away. For these families, hardship isn’t a phase or a novelty - it’s their everyday life. Yet even there, joy finds a way in: a photograph as a keepsake, a princess gown like the ones my daughter used to wear, a bubble catching the sunlight.
The Real Weight: Service, Sacrifice, and Perspective
As I wring out my clothes and hang them to dry, I find myself feeling a twinge of pride for “toughing it out.” But perspective has a way of sneaking in. On Friday, a colleague retired from active duty, serving the US Navy honorably for twenty years. Someone who I have deep respect for, deepened by watching him interact with his three sons, his wife, his mother. Thinking of the many months spent away from them, serving across the globe in challenging conditions. A Seabee, the Navy’s construction force, making life a bit more comfortable for those deployed to faraway places.
I think about a friend of mine, a Marine officer, and the stories he’s shared. Marches that stretch for twenty miles or more, packs weighing forty or fifty pounds, sometimes much more. The kind of weight that isn’t just a training tool, but a necessity for survival, for the mission, for those you serve beside.
The time deployed and the miles they cover aren’t a vacation or mapped out by an app, and there’s no option to tap out or head home to comfort. Their discomfort isn’t elective; it’s required. Their purpose isn’t just personal growth or a future pilgrimage, but the safety and well-being of others, sometimes people they will never even meet.
It puts my own challenges into stark perspective. My training is a privilege, my discomfort chosen, my mission self-defined. For those in service of our country - and those in places like Copan Ruinas - resilience isn’t an ideal, it’s a daily practice.
Sunday Gratitude: Closing the Loop
As the day winds down, my clothes, wrung out and sun-dried, are ready to be folded and put away. The novelty of “roughing it” fades quickly when you have the choice to step back into comfort. I had the option of tossing everything in the machine. I could take a hot shower, sit in air conditioning, and scroll through my day’s progress on my phone. And here I sit, about to have dinner with my family.
This isn’t about personal accomplishment or self-denial. It isn’t about making anyone feel guilty, either. It’s about pausing, even on a Sunday laced with anxieties and restlessness, to recognize the weight I choose versus the weight others carry. It’s about shifting from “Sunday Scaries” to “Sunday Gratitude.”
I am grateful for the luxury of discomfort, for the privilege of choosing a challenge. Grateful for those who serve, for those who endure, and for the reminder that resilience is everywhere - sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, always necessary.
The question I’m left with - maybe the question for all of us - is simple:
How can I use this perspective? How can I better serve? What can I do for that little girl in Honduras, for the family living in a makeshift home, for those who carry much heavier burdens so that I, and many others, may have these choices? What can I do to better serve those who sacrifice so much that we often take for granted? Spending months away from home, enduring hardships and sacrifices, so that I can have the life that I do?
Maybe it’s as simple as remembering not to take the basics for granted. Maybe it’s acting on that gratitude, however I can. Maybe…