On this day one year ago, I walked into Santiago de Compostela. I have been writing a series of reflections on my experience. This one is the first part of “10 Lessons Learned from the Camino.”
1. Less is more. To walk the 500 miles from St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela, I had everything I needed in my backpack. To walk that kind of distance, a person really needs to take very little. I had the clothes on my back and extra pair of clothes in the pack. I brought a lightweight sleep sack and a tech towel. I thought about everything I needed and did not bring extra. In little towns and villages, I refrained from buying things that I would need to carry with me, except for chorizo. Loved chorizo. I learned that I could live with less, and I didn’t miss it. I could be happy detached from material things. Around 300BC, Aristotle wrote that there were four levels of happiness. The first and most basic level was happiness attained from the material world and physical pleasure. This was a happiness that was fleeting and temporary. It does not last nor sustain. It was not a “bad” thing, but something that could not truly satisfy the human heart. Letting go of the material, and even the feeling of needing “stuff” was liberating. Everything I needed, I had in my pack, and in my heart.
2. Walk your own pace. There will be fast walkers and there will be slow walkers. There are people who are strong and those who are not. The journey to Santiago is not a race, but rather, a pilgrimage. There were times I felt pressure to keep up with the people around me. I enjoyed their company and wanted to walk with them, even if they walked at a faster pace than I. There were other times I wanted to show other pilgrims I was strong enough to keep up, because it was a matter of pride. When I was struggling up a mountain, breathing heavy and taking breaks, and a seventy-year-old pilgrim happily passed me saying “buen camino!” my pride was hurt. Surely, I could keep up with him. No, I couldn’t. There were other times where my friends were stopping but I felt I had to keep going. I struggled with wanting the closeness and comraderie of friends on the road or following my own path. Pride and comfort challenged me, and slowly I had to learn to walk my own pace. It can be exhausting to follow the crowd. I had to learn that walking my own pace was learning to be okay with who I was. At times I am strong. At times I am weak. At all times, I am me. Learning to embrace who I am with my strengths and weaknesses, and being honest about myself, has helped me to love myself for who I am.
3. Allow silence. Many of us are uncomfortable with silence. As a musician, dj, speaker, husband, and father, my life is constantly surrounded with noise. Growing up in a busy and noisy household, it was rare to find silence and when it arrived, I didn’t feel comfortable with it. One of the great gifts of the Camino is silence. Walking along the Way, a pilgrim is bound to meet others and strike up conversations. Some people commit to fasting from their electronics or listening to music, others do not. But even then, there will be moments of silence. In the silence, my mind wandered. I pondered deep questions. I wrestled with things that I had long hid away. I confronted my guilt and anger, my hurt, and my joys. Eventually, I allowed a deep silence to reside in me. A silence I did not need to fill with questions, or thoughts, or feelings. I allowed that silence to move me deeper into myself, to a place where I was no longer uncomfortable, but rather, at peace. Some see silence as an absence – an absence of sound. As Cardinal Sarah, a leader in the Catholic Church has said, “silence is not an absence. On the contrary, it is the manifestation of a presence, the most intense of all presences.” In walking in silence, I realized that silence is the language of God. When we quiet ourselves to enter into deep silence, we realize in silence that God speaks, and God is constantly speaking. It is no wonder that the prophet Elijah heard God not in the thunder or the fire, but rather in a quiet, whispering sound. Embracing deep silence allows us to hear the heart of God, who is ever near, and ever present.
4. Siesta. I’m from the United States, where productivity is a value, maybe second to freedom. While I have embraced the idea of a nap here and there, most of my life my mentality was “go, go, go!” I once was offered a missionary post in the Caribbean, but I turned it down because I thought, “life is too slow and the pace too relaxed down there!” What was I thinking?! Walking the Camino a curious thing would happen when arriving in a town in the afternoon. After walking all morning, I would usually arrive in the town I was going to stay in between 1-3pm. At 3pm in all of Spain, stores and bars close for Siesta, to open up again around 7pm. At first I rejected this idea and was upset. How can anyone get anything done?! It took me a week or so to get used to the idea of Siesta, a period of rest. Soon I began to enjoy it. Instead of exploring the town or doing something “productive,” I would shower, hand wash my clothes and put on my other outfit, and then siesta. Glorious siesta. Rested and recharged from an hour or more of napping and regrouping, I was ready to explore once again. The body needs rest and fuel. Self-care takes many forms, but siesta is built into the soul of Spanish culture. Once I rejected it, now I wish I could have it again. Take a siesta. Seriously, more siesta needed.
5. Second Bar Rule. In Spain, a bar is more than just a bar like in the United States. It is a restaurant, café, and bar all in one. They are open early for breakfast, and throughout the day, except during siesta. One of my favorite parts of the Camino was to wake up before the sunrise and start my walk. After about 5 – 10 kms it would about time for breakfast. I would stop at a bar and order a café con leche. This wondrous elixir is Spanish coffee with steamed milk, and it was amazing. Truly better than anything I’ve had here. A lot has been said about why it is so good, and I won’t get into those details here, but trust me, it is incredible. I would usually couple that with a tortilla Espanola, usually just called “tortilla,” which is a potato omelet. Walking into town, not being the fastest walker or earliest riser, the first bar was usually busy, and often took a long time to get food or use the bathroom. It wasn’t so bad because there were usually many pilgrims around to get to know and chat with. After the waiting and the resting, and the chatting, I would finally start walking again and a couple hundred meters down the road there would another bar, almost empty. Usually that bar had an awesome looking menu, a clean bathroom, and owners who were waiting for pilgrims to arrive; the pilgrims who were all at the first bar they saw. I made it a rule of mine to always go the second bar, because I never knew what I would find there. A different menu, a surprise, different sets of pilgrims. My second rule, in conjunction with the second bar rule, was never go back. So if the town only had one bar, well, the second bar was in the next town, which was usually only 5-10 kms away. I had so much fun with the second bar rule and never regretted it. The point hit home when I did not follow the second bar rule. Starving, after a grueling morning, I came upon an open bar a little outside the town of Hospital de Obrigo. Me and a few others thought about stopping but discussed the second bar rule. But we were hungry and decided to stop. It was fine, with nothing to write home about. Then we walked on. We came upon a medieval bridge at the entrance to the town. It was one of the longest bridges on the Camino and it was part of the inspiration for the story of Don Quixote. We took pictures and read the legends of that beautiful bridge. As we walked across it, at the end of the bridge I saw a bar with an amazing view of the bridge and a lovely menu. The second bar. I should have followed my own rules. Always wait for the second bar.
