Buen Camino...

The last few days have felt surreal.

Exactly one week ago, around noon, in the dark shadows of a short, arched tunnel, I walked with hastening vigor past a man playing bagpipes and into a massive sun-filled plaza teeming with people. They milled around - standing, lying, sitting, walking, hugging, crying, marveling, reflecting - purposefully and aimlessly at the same time, in front of the spectacular structure that is the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

20 days before, on June 5, I started, with my brother, a walking pilgrimage from the town of St. Jean Pied-de-Port in France, up and over the Pyrenees, covering, on foot, a total distance of 400 km to the square of the great cathedral. 1,517 other pilgrims arrived at the church on June 24, of the approximately 500,000 pilgrims expected to credential in 2024, each traversing distances of 110 to 3,000 km, over a few days or many months. They walk or cycle parts of or all of dozens of routes starting all around Europe, and converge at the unmistakable landmark in the city of Santiago in northwestern Spain, at the cathedral where the remains of James the apostle of Jesus are entombed. Camino de Santiago, or St. James Way, is one of three great pilgrimages of Christendom.

While most of the pilgrims who have walked the Camino de Santiago over the 12 centuries of the sojourn have been driven by their faith, many of today's pilgrims (or peregrinos), are not driven by religion, or commenced their journeys from homes in Europe. Our route was a proverbial melting pot of faiths of all kinds and nationalities from all seven continents, spurred by a myriad of personal motivations to take on the challenging experience of walking 15 to 40 km a day. Testing backs, hips, lungs, knees, hearts, feet, muscles, and minds, I was in awe of so much and so many - the 80 year olds and 4 year olds, the families and couples or siblings in concert (like us), and sometimes, walkers with loyal dogs at their side.

When I first learned about the Camino in February, I was immediately drawn and interested in experiencing it. The notion of life as a journey has been central to my exploration of the world. I revere the role of walking not just as a fundamental physical human activity, but also as a powerful and symbolic analog of human history and endeavour - a simple but indispensable enabler of all our journeys. We are admonished - Walk before you run. We look forward to babies' first steps, and we and Baby laugh and cry and celebrate when their journey begins with those initial clumsy shuffles. It is true, as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu puts it - A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

A month before my 12th birthday, when I started secondary school in Freetown, Sierra Leone, I began going to school each day on my own. It was an independence I welcomed and relished. I mostly took public buses and taxis but increasingly started to walk the roughly 4 km to school, and back. I got to meet and make friends, see more of the city, and learn much from those walks.

Since then I have enjoyed the gift of walking and movement, journeying over 7,700 km to Atlanta in 1991 and to fifteen other residences over the last 30+ years - 95,000 km crisscrossing the world - from Portland to Kuala Lumpur, from Berlin to Port au Prince, and from Denver to Utrecht. In my career in retail, I have walked large swathes of global cities - Paris, Seoul, New York, Nairobi, Mexico City, and many, many more.

The Camino was different.

The Camino was decidedly less glamourous and more taxing - forcing serious focus not on the distant Santiago, but on how to get there, how to manage one's body through difficult landscapes, sweltering heat, and numerous pains, and undoubtedly questioning and reaffirming the why of the way. It forced a breakdown of big distances into small goals - that hill, that village, the river, and then Roncesvalles, Pamplona, Logrono, Belorado, Portomarin, Arzua, and so on.

The Camino was more instructive and unequivocal – emphasizing lessons for a lifetime: about how to travel with purpose, light-footed and in harmony, not only with the universe and nature and others, but also with oneself - the self that we must become honest agents and authentic representatives of, the self whose potential we are entitled to realize, and whose song we are duty-bound to sing, the self that we dare not lose in the craziness of a turbulent and challenging world.

The Camino made me grateful - of my ability to walk in health towards the north star that I chose. In my plodding solitude, I thought about those who are unable to walk due to illness or affliction, those who are compelled to walk, like refugees from war, and those who are forced to walk, like the coffles of my ancestors marched overland to slave ships. They could not stop, as I could, at cafes for coffee, or rest in albergues, or sip chilled potable water from hi-tech bladders, or be held up by carbon poles, or bounce on jagged rocks on modern outsoles.

The Camino made me appreciate why we chose walking and marching as an exercise in solidarity and empathy, in protest, in the shared experience of discomfort, to drive new movements, and to demand that the downtrodden also have their right of way. It highlights their resilience just as much as it underscores our own capacity, and obligation, to reach our unfulfilled potential, to be better, to do more and to become.

The Camino was nurturing - I learned more about how to better craft my walk and walk my unique path - in community with others and with deference to myself. We did not travel alone. Much must be said about the incredible hospitality of the people of Basque Country, Navarre, La Rioja, Castile y Leon, and Galicia who tend the trails, and restaurants, and artifacts, and inns, and hospitals, and water fountains along the way, and have ensured the safety and success of peregrinos for over 1,000 years.

There were lessons for business and leadership too, that I wished I had internalized decades before.

The last few days have felt surreal because the Camino already feels distant from this morning, and already crowded out by life's stubborn priorities. At the same time, it is an exciting and meaningful new part of me that is here to stay (and perhaps to be repeated). There is still much to unpack and digest from those 21 days, which I know has the potential to enhance my way forward for a long time. And which I hope enables me to support others on their own way with more grace and a more helpful posture of service.

In a few weeks, after their summer break, my two young children will start going to school on their own. They prefer to ride their bicycles, not walk, but I know they too will burrow down tunnels of learning and discovery, and climb hills of challenge and opportunity. I do not know what their way will be like, but I hope they own it, cherish it, and walk it with deliberation, and vigor. Not everyone can or must walk the St. James Way, but wherever we are is the journey we are meant to be on, and is our own unique way.

I wish them and everyone in the journey of life the same as we wished each other in greeting and farewell on the way to Santiago:

Buen Camino…

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