At the end of this week, I’m heading back to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago again. I did this pilgrimage in 2015 – well, I did about half of it. I ended up with a stress fracture in my foot and had to bus it through much of the central part of the walk. But then ‘girded my loins’ so to speak, took lots of pain killers and managed to complete the final 100 kilometres in order to get my certificate, also known as the Compostela.
Now, in preparation for that trip, I did what most people do. I read everyone else’s experiences, I followed their instructions on just how much ground I need to cover each day, what shoes I would need, what I would need to carry, etc. etc.
And that’s how I ended up with a stress fracture.
Now, this second time around, I’m going to be using what I learned – not so much about the Camino itself, but what I learned about me. What shoes work for me. What distances I can cover in a day. The weight of the pack that works for me.
The Camino is a great metaphor for life – even when simply looking at the preparation stage.
You see, when muddle our way through life, we look to those around us to provide a guide as to how to live our lives. What we should be doing, when we should be at each stage of life, what we should have achieved by that stage, what our education should be, what we should do for a job, if and when we should have a family, how much money we should be making, what we should own, and it goes on and on.
There are a lot of “shoulds” there.
The thing is, everyone’s journey is meant to be different. There are over 8 billion people on the planet today. They all can’t do things in the same order, in the same way and achieve the same outcomes in life.
You can also bring that number down so that it reflects the number of people you have in your life. You can’t all do things in the same order, in the same way, achieve the same things, and so on.
And we aren’t supposed to all want the same things in life.
Each one of us is a unique human being, with our own unique purpose and our own unique journey that we will take.
We will make mistakes – some of our own doing, and some because we chose to listen and follow someone else’s path instead of walking our own path in our own way.
Mistakes are just part of the course and they are so important. The trick is to not get stuck in ruminating over them but to take what we learn from them and make different choices as we keep moving forward.
That’s what I’m doing in this year’s Camino. Taking the learnings from 2015 and making different decisions this time around.
Will I make mistakes again – you bet. But I’m sure those mistakes will contain within them some great learnings I can carry with me into the future.
This is my 2023 pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. It’s my journey and I’m doing it my way.
So, whatever your journey in life may be, make it your own and do it your way.
