This is your life. You wake up early, pack your sleeping bag away, put on your backpack, and walk. Yellow arrows tell you which direction to go. Scenic farmland. Small village. Industrial wasteland. Large city. You arrive at your next hostel. Rinse and repeat. Each day, the seasons change just a little. Grapes vines begin blossoming. Before you know it, you’ve arrived.
It’s a simple way of life. And when you complete your camino, you feel a little empty. That identity that you spent your whole life building, that shell you’ve built around yourself for protection from pain, has a crack in it. Or if you’re lucky, it’s broken. After you return, you’re not the same.
I lived this simple life for six weeks in Northern Spain, beginning at the French border and ending on the Atlantic coast (see my daily travel log). Each day, I connected with pilgrims, ate delicious food, and contemplated life.
Why I walked
If you’re open to it, a pilgrimage is one path to let go of the parts of your identify no longer serving you and be reborn into something new. I went into my pilgrimage seeking answers. My relationship and job had hit their expiration dates, and I needed a kind of bridge. I didn’t think of the journey as spiritual, I just needed time to reflect and figure out the next steps on my path.
What I learned
To let go
I contemplated that all the things in my life that I’d been attaching myself to had expiration dates. To enjoy these fully, but then allow myself to relax and let go. I had spent so much of my life building an identity, attaching myself to something, in order to avoid pain. Maybe it would be easier if I changed my relationship with pain, instead of trying to avoid it.
To appreciate
Everyone that comes into my life is there for a reason. To not take them for granted. Every pilgrim I met along my journey taught me something, was there for me at the moment when I needed it.
To listen
To my body. To my heart. To stop seeking outer solutions to inner problems and move toward a path of self-love. To use meditation to stay centered and connect with my higher self.
To dig deep
To contemplate my deepest values and ideals. To seek work that fills me versus empties me. To find meaningful work that fills my bucket.
A year later
When I returned, my pilgrimage hadn’t ended. I didn’t come back with all the answers I was looking for. But something had shifted. My heart had opened. I felt a sense of connection and spirituality. My shell had a crack. Fast forward to a year later, and a part of me has been trying to patch the shell up, but unsuccessfully. And that’s spiritual growth.
Recommended Readings
On pilgrimaging, letting go, and finding your heart:
- Rebirth– Kamal Ravikant’s inspiring novel based on walking the Camino de Santiago.
- The Surrender Experiment– Michael A. Singer’s true-life story on what happens when you just let go.
- Soulshaping– Jeff Brown’s inspiring memoir on struggling to find his heart and a more authentic, soulful path.
