The 10 life lessons from the Camino
My husband Timme Bisgaard Munk and I have just returned home after walking the Camino Primitivo and Camino Finisterra, from Muxía in northern Spain to Death Coast and End of the World, totaling 450 km. In addition to the spiritual and religious experience, there are 10 life lessons that we have brought home, taught to us by the Camino (Spanish for 'the road ').
?Here for inspiration and emulation, for the journey is the road itself:
Create more, better, and larger frameworks for uninterrupted companionship with your loved ones
?The Camino provides an incredible number of hours of undisturbed companionship when walking 25 to 30 kilometers each day for several weeks. This deep companionship creates a sense of solidarity. Uninterrupted companionship is all too rare in everyday life. Consider how you can make room for more uninterrupted companionship with your loved ones. A gift you owe yourself and your social life. ?Link to source
Allow space for spontaneous 'stream of consciousness' conversations with people in your life
?Being part of a family, a lineage, and a circle of friends is to be born into a conversation between the living and the dead. That conversation needs space and tranquility to grow. The many hours on the Camino provide a space for an exploratory, searching 'stream of consciousness' conversation, in a continuous flow, kilometer after kilometer. You ask and listen better and let whims and fleeting thoughts become questions and answers. A form of conversation that stands in contrast to the efficiency, maximization, and teleological conversations of everyday life, where goals and means are established. Link to source?
Everything requires hard work
You won't get very far on the Camino without significant personal effort, where every step counts and depletes your energy. It's about willpower and resilience. The premise is always the personal hard work needed, if you want to move yourself, the world, or other people. On the Camino as in life, there's no one else to blame, and no one else who can do your hard work for you. Link to source
Consider how you can experience the world and nature without filters
When you hike, you sense the scents and feel the different stages of the day with your whole body. Forests, streams, barking dogs, birds, sun, wind, rain, sweat, pain, thirst, and cold. It's nourishing because in the sterile office landscape of everyday life, we all stare into the same computer screen and interface, shielded from nature's impressions. A stream is a video clip that can be manipulated. On the Camino, a stream is a sound, a wet boot, and an obstacle. Here you experience the hiking path through your nose, your ears, and your feet. Link to source
Bring a 'enough is enough' mindset home in your backpack
On the Camino, you only have a very small backpack - neither more nor less than you need. A woolen buff, serves at once as a headband, a scarf, and a mitten that can provide warmth to cold hands. You carry a maximum of 7 kilos, and yet you lack nothing. It's the feeling of freedom to cut away all unnecessary things. This is something we could learn from and apply to everyday life, where our biggest challenges globally are extreme overconsumption and the production of unnecessary items. Link to source
Remember the body and surrender to its abilities and signals
The body is both god and devil when you walk. Completely opposite to a normal academic workday, where your body is on standby and your brain is at work. When you walk, it's the body's needs that need fine-tuning. Too hot, too cold, need for fluids. The feet that carry you through are constantly in focus, cared for, reinforced if there are signs of wear.
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Consider what you can learn from other people and how you can invite other cultures and perspectives into your daily life
?On the Camino, on any given day, you'll meet, talk to, have dinner with, and sleep in dormitories with a wide range of different cultures and people from all over the world. Here, people meet naturally across culture, age, and ethnicity. It creates diversity and cross-cultural sharing of experiences, bringing ease and understandingwithin the intricate tapestry of human connection. Link to source
Can you give your problems a symbolic form that you can use in rituals as a means of self-therapy and reflection?
?On the Camino, people pick up stones as symbols of the problems they carry with them. The ritual is to place these stones on one of the Camino's many waymarkers. Symbolically, one acknowledges and places one's problem as part of the Camino in a kind of geospatial self-therapy. There's something to learn here, for the Camino's problem stones can be transformed and reused for all our burdensome problems. Link to source
Create ?fixed routines for some social situations, so there's not constant stress about what to choose
?One of the most stressful things is social conflicts about what to do and who gets to decide. This issue only gets exacerbated when you're on vacation and out of the fixed frameworks of everyday life. Typically, for example, getting teenagers to join in on trips can be extremely exhausting. Often, the shared social and private activities become political compromises that no one is satisfied with. This problem dissolves when hiking together because there are few things up for debate and free choice. The fantastic thing about the Camino is that the framework is so fixed and the routines so ritualized. This dissolves many of the social conflicts over what to choose and what not to choose, and especially who gets to decide. You can bring this into your everyday life and create more social frameworks and rituals that result in fewer political conflicts about who determines the frameworks.
Go to the end of the world with your loved one, together in good times and bad
Finally, it's healthy for everyone's marriage to go to Finisterre, which the Romans and indigenous people believed was the end of the world, together. For nothing is greater than love in good times and bad from the beginning of the world to the end.
If you're considering walking the Camino yourself, a seasoned hiking couple has gathered all their tips on everything from route selection to packing, blisters, and rain, and generously shares them here: Free Footprints.
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Lovely article, Runa. Thank you. My wife and I walked in the same area last summer. Your article brings back wonderful memories of that exciting coastline ??
"Everything [meaningful] requires hard work."