I’m writing this from the train to Barcelona with my laptop, my head leaning against the window. I can see own reflection as I type, and honestly I can’t even read my own expression. I had meant to post something yesterday but couldn’t find it in me — so much going on, and no idea how to sort through my emotions and thoughts.
Yesterday night I sat with my friend admiring the Santiago cathedral, when a similarly aged person approached us and asked us if we had just finished the pilgrimage. We answered yes and she asked why we had done it — she had always considered it but never thought it was for her.
I’m going to share a fuller version of the tiny preview I articulated to her.
The Camino has just ended for me, but the reflection and introspection and philosophizing it has inspired has really just begun. As I have alluded to previously, I have come to imagine the experience as the Camino as a simplified world for the real world. A toy model where lessons can equally find meaning in the complications of real life. Where, even though Camino life is simple and filled with only the most basic of necessities - food, water, walking, community - there are innumerable bridges to be built between the two.
My focus for this series was muddled when I began posting daily about the Camino from day 1. I started this Substack a few months prior with the goal to focus on political framing exclusively. I am now confident in saying that by the end of the experience, political framing was just a proxy, just an excuse and an exercise to talk about real life and my lessons learned about real life.
I intended to build bridges between my reflections on the Camino and politics. This last month, instead I built a bridge every day between the Camino world and the real world. From the uniqueness of the individual to the complications of collective action to the nuances of art, music, and culture to the values of religion and coincidence to the meaning of truth to the impact of legacy — and many more.
Those who hear that I walked the Camino will probably be impressed for the wrong reasons — the sheer distance I walked, the nerve to do so in a foreign country as a 19-year-old, alone. It just sounds impressive. In real life conversation, I don’t think I would correct them - it feels weird to tell someone they’re wrong about a compliment.
Here, however, I feel completely comfortable sharing that these reactions are appreciated but miss the larger point. The distance never really mattered beyond the time and opportunity it created to be in community. No one ever really cared that I was 19 years old, and I stopped caring too.
And I was never alone.
I was never alone.
The collective experience of the Camino now constitutes one of those experiences so incredible and eye-opening and transformational that I would find it impossible to describe it in words if someone where to simply ask me, “How was it?”
So I am eternally grateful to everything and everyone (including you, audience :)) that inspired me each day to write about my experience in live time — a collection of thoughts that does a better job of approximating the incredible complexity of the last month, despite the simplicity of the life I lived.
A chance to sit in my own reflection.
If you’ve enjoyed following along, please consider sharing these reflections to anyone you know who might be interested — it would mean everything to me, and it might mean everything to them. I could tell it meant a lot to the person who introduced herself yesterday, who took a leap of faith to talk to two strangers who probably looked like they just wanted to admire the physical fruits of their labor, uninterrupted.
And thank you for bearing with the daily posts! I’ll be in Barcelona for a few days where I hope to write about independence, then in Athens where I’ll perhaps write about democracy, historically and present-day (there are elections happening while I’m there!), and then Switzerland, where I’ll write about healthcare, human rights, and more.
Stayed tuned - this is just the beginning :).