WHY
You drift evenly into thin air, feeling the security of the familiar and relying on the correctness of everyday life. They can not lie. Grayness of life never lies. Nothing is happening. Nothing to awaken the senses. Make you smile or cry, to be upset or feel needed by someone. You do not need anyone. So as you do not need the others because gray is equally gray every day for everyone around you.
Sometimes you feel hesitation. You wonder if this was the life you dreamt from childhood. Is this the way your future had to look like? Weren’t there more emotions in your childhood projects? Shouldn’t you feel love every day? Haven’t you planned to not repeat the mistakes of the adults around you? You planned to live your life with love, friends, in discovering the unknown and leaving a trace behind. A trace, which is part of the overall work of people like you.
It did not work out. Uniformity made you uniform. You do not feel, do not change, do not create happiness. You enjoy the stereotype. You celebrate the rules of the present. You do not dare to be different, as you can find yourself alone. Whenever you want it to be different, imaginative, created by you, you feel someone’s reproach. You’re stubborn! You try to show that it can be different from the gray and you’re left alone. In spite of that you believe in your rightness. You persist, expecting understanding and cooperation, explaining, dreaming, looking for support. It’s support you need. Without this support you lose orientation. You’re lost in your thoughts and wander between confidence and doubt. You gradually feel how doubt haunts you. You’re probably wrong. Perhaps your childhood dreams were wrong. Probably you failed to feel something back then, far away in the past. Not been a good kid, not been careful in school, you missed an important life lesson …. You’ve lost yourself.
You’re happy, but you do not feel joy. You create, and do not feel it as your own work, but as part of the expected result. You celebrate because others expect you to celebrate, but you feel the emptiness. You make love because the physical need brings you together with someone, but with no emotion. You love … No, you stopped loving. You realize that you forgot that feeling. You accept the fact, humbly agreeing to the grayness of everyday life and looking for temporary support. Now you’re afraid to change. Afraid to not …. ruin your life even more. You do not realize that it has already been ruined.
In reality, you want it to be a dream. No, it’s not a dream.
—-
They kept passing each other for two days. Sometimes she would get ahead a little farther, then he would miss a break and get ahead of her. The weather was sunny. Smiles exchanged were like the dreams from childhood. It was not possible. He forced himself to suppress that forgotten feeling. It can not be true. Yet she is just one of all those people left to walk the way of St. James. Here respect and greetings are routine. He decided it was better not to let the sense of attraction left in the past to engross. He was aware of himself. Thirty years were enough to lose love as a feeling. Thirty years he had not met the sincere support of a woman beside him. Of course he wasn’t living alone. He has always had a woman beside him, but what was happening now was different. No, it was not a physical attraction.
She did not escape the eyes and greetings of the man with the big backpack and the funny little hat. He was about fifty or maybe more. Probably he greeted her out of politeness. Did he think that she should pay more attention? It Is funny.
Hundreds, and possibly thousands of people travel the road to Santiago de Compostela every year. Probably just as many are the reasons that cause them to do so. Everyone decides for themselves where to start, how much to walk and how to organize their time. Some were rushing. Gray life has given them very little time and now they had to quickly walk their way of self-discover. Others had all the time in the world. There were people for whom every movement represented an effort, but like the others they also walked the road. Sometimes merry groups of young people outwalked. They were laughing. You feel how the energies of each one of them merge into a thought or a shared drive for something beautiful. It becomes enjoyable and you want to take a little of the positive mood. You succeed. You’re filled with pleasant feeling and contentment that you’re a part of the common deed. It infects you and you want to give someone positive emotion. You want to be useful, to help if necessary. You understand that you are not alone. Here they are all positive. There is so much positive energy collected here. Perhaps if people knew how it would be used to neutralize negativity of grayness around the world. Of course, that is impossible, but the pleasure of being in some other parallel world without negativity, makes you happy.
Walking thirty or even forty kilometers a day can be a pleasant experience. You get to know your capabilities. Surprisingly, you can. One always can. Can anything. The important thing is to want it strong.
You choose to leave yourself to the tranquility of nature. The road offers you everything you need to feel relaxed. You do not hurry and look for a way to walk as possible a short distance with the only thought so that this trip lasts more and more. To postpone your meeting with your other world.
Hundreds of human destinies have headed towards finding their essence. Fates, each once keeping in themselves countless moments of experienced pain, joy, hope, disappointment, smile, insult, confidence, weakness, dreams not come true or failed friendships and promises of loyalty, happy experience and longstanding relationships. There’s of everything. Everyone is willing to share. They find an occasion and a way to share themselves. Sharing teaches you. Sharing changes you. You share and listen what others around you narrate. Day after day something changes in you. You find yourself. You find your life. The one you dreamed of in your childhood, but the grayness of everyday life has hidden from you.
He arrived quite late in the albergue. Fortunately, there were enough vacancies. The rooms were with four beds. In this he was alone. The relief of the distance walked and the opportunity to relax fill in the thoughts. The pleasure is divine. You feel how your every muscle sends a signal to the brain. Signal of appreciation that you allowed it to relax.
Then she entered. Tall, with blond hair and a warm smile. Her face radiated serenity and beauty. The beauty of happiness. She greeted and immediately laid her body on the adjacent bed. They laid in silence. Not able to see each other, but to sense themselves. He could feel her presence. He could feel the rhythm of her heart. He felt happy. Yes, they did not know each other. They had not spoken. It was not necessary. He thought of fate. In all random passes so far he has not even dared to start a conversation. Probably some distorted courtesy or shyness prevented him of doing it. Fate did it. It got them together.
Two more people were accommodated in the room. A boy who was constantly listening to music or writing and a man of about fifty-five from Canada. A walk followed, a little shopping. They met. She started the conversation. She likes to visit churches. The one in the city is nearby. All right. They’ll see each other at dinner. They sat next to each other. Her calm face exuded confidence.
You go on the Camino route. You expect something to happen. And it happens. Day after day, step by step, the route changes you. You suffer every thought that obsesses you. You endure time in which consciousness leads you through a series of unfulfilled dreams, a bad memory from the past, a missed moment of joy, tedium of grayness around you and … you change. Camino changes you. Changes the lives of hundreds of people. People who here find their will to strongly request their dreams to come true, to love, to realize their most difficult life projects.
You go to the Camino alone. You want to be alone. The presence of the people around you is imperceptible. Everyone is ready to grant your wish. Everyone understands and remains invisible to you, because unconsciously they feel you. You feel too. This is not repulsion, but reclamation of the so long awaited privacy. It helps you arrange your thoughts, find your mistakes, release the suppressed in you. You cost the good and bad. Privacy gives you the decisions on issues that consciousness has suppressed in time. You find that balance in your life that has lacked.
Along the way you see the many sorrows, fears, anguish and negative memories that others like you have delivered themselves from. Each pebble left on or around the guiding stones with the sign of the Camino is a terminated nightmare or fear. You cut the connection of fear or doubt, and you take your life in your hands. Determining your own destiny.
Fate met them again. The next evening they were in the same albergue. It was no coincidence. It was fate. Fatigue, rest, dinner out somewhere. They picked up for a while in the city. She was charming. Her smile.
Three days’ affection. No sex, but love. How much energy this is. Oh God, this makes you strong and confident. Three days in which you forget about the other world. That parallel life of yours in which love is missing. Three days in which rain was pouring over you, but you’re happy. Three days during which you drive more kilometers, but do not feel fatigue. Three days in which you laugh, joke, ask and narrate. There is no way for this to be narrated. It must be experienced.
She got to know him. He was trying to learn more about her, but refrained from asking questions. He was gentle despite his uncertainty. He loved! He hasn’t loved since that day twenty-nine years ago when a girl in a distant country simply said to him: “It’s over. I will not live with you.” Twenty-nine years during which he had forbidden to let love near him. He forbade himself because he was afraid. Fear from being humiliated and discarded again. Of course, he does not live alone, but his feelings were locked deep inside his soul, and no one was admitted to them. He himself never unlocked, even for himself the place in which they had been hidden forever.
On the route to Santiago de Compostela you have plenty of time. You walk, and you walk and just like that you discover something new for yourself.
He behaved disgracefully. During the fourth day he was unbearable. He suppressed in himself all the feelings again. He isolated himself. He closed himself to everything around. There was no reason. What happened? Love was there, but he did not dare to share it. His consciousness reprimanded him, but he could not take away the coldness that he radiated. He knew it was wrong and dangerous. She could lose her forever. He could not change anything. He was weak.
Do we disable ourselves alone in life? Are we born disabled? Does life change us and makes us trapped in ourselves? Could this be the missing lesson from childhood? You don’t feel it. You become reclusive and need a lot of support. Support of a loved one.
He succeeded. He succeeded to find and unlock his feelings. It was hard. Terribly hard. It happened on the Route. He overcame that feeling of fear to share. He succeeded and fate immediately rewarded him.
The next day they met. Not many words were needed. The smiles on their faces were sincere. They laughed, ate tapas, a walk. Tonight they were going to separate. She had to leave. She would be back on the Route again after a few months to walk it until the end.
A hug gave him energy to not lock his feelings nevermore.
The Camino route is magical. It is enough to want it strongly. If you look around you presumably you will understand that it is not just the daily grind. There are people who can understand you. Look around!
“Buen Camino! I believe that I will meet you again. I truly love again! You! I want this forever. “
Villadangos del Paramo 21.9.2015