Just Walking

If there has been a message I have been getting from Life lately, it has been to see my own life more as a pilgrimage, a holy journey, and less like a race to some goal or destination.

My girlfriend, Kelly, is walking the ancient Camino de Santiago in Spain now and has walked more than half of the 500+ mile journey. And I just made a new friend, Pamela, who completed the same pilgrimage this past July. Out of about 150 other vendors, we landed in booths next to each other at the Saturday Market. Until this month, I've never known a single soul who walked the Camino. And now two? So now I'm listening.

What I love about the image of pilgrimage is that whatever happens during this trek to a holy place is itself imbued with sacred meaning. New story lines are suddenly possible. As a pilgrim, walking the Camino, you might interpret having your water bottle stolen as a message to travel through life with less “stuff,” or to learn the value of forgiveness so you don’t have to lug yet another resentment along the path with you.

Or the pilgrimage might teach you that the exterior journey to a holy place is meant to prompt the inward journey to your center. Or that everyone you meet on your path is an unlikely angel, someone whom you have waited a lifetime to meet in this one moment, perhaps with a message meant just for you. Or that the point of walking the Camino isn’t simply enduring to the end, but becoming the kind of person who knows how to journey through life's obstacles with a bit more humility and skill than before.

In other words, walking the Camino is an exercise in recognizing the sacred journey we are on every day of our lives. Of course, one doesn’t have to fly to Spain to get the point. It seems that Life is suggesting that I heed the lessons of pilgrimage--without the airfare--as I try and feel my way towards the answer to what I want to be when I grow up. Much is already in place, but I am still lacking something that will help me to bring the pieces of my life, my interests, and talents, into a coherent whole.

When I get overwhelmed by the fact that I am still groping around, still not quite sure, still searching for “my” thing, I remember Kelly’s reply to me when I gushed how impressive it is that she is actually doing the Camino: “I'm just walking.” And I relax.

Walking is all that is required. Taking step, after step, after step. Even (and perhaps especially) if you don’t yet know your goal, but you do commit to taking the next step as fully and honestly as you can, the Way will take care of itself.