Well, I am finally getting into this book. I know. I'm not the fastest reader on the block when re-reading these books. I started a new job and that is taking a lot of time, which isn't helping things.
Anyways, while I am by no means finished the book, I'm now far enough in that I am starting to form definite opinions. And I'm remembering why I liked the book.
The book is not written like a regular memoir, following the author(s) from point A (generally SJPP, or Le Puy, or somewhere) to point B (Santiago or Finisterre or Muxia). Instead the chapters are organized around various lessons. And for me, that resonates with what I walked away from the Camino with. Yes, I deeply valued the places I saw, stayed at, ate at, the people I met, etc. But what I most wanted to preserve upon return was the lessons I learned. Lessons that were specific to the Camino but so much broader in application. When I worried about returning to the "real world" (a worry that seems to crop up frequently in these forums), the worry wan't about returning from Spain, but about losing sight of those lessons.
When I did return to Canada and to my regular job, I was asked to write about my Camino for the newsletter at work. The article I wrote was called "The long walk: five lessons from the Camino". The lessons I picked were:
- Just keep putting one foot in front of the other
- Take care of your feet
- It's not a race
- You don't need as much as you think you do
- Support each other as we head towards the same goal
On the surface, they were about the Camino, but they weren't really. They were about how we can best work with each other (it was a work newsletter, after all).
So I guess it shouldn't be much of a surprise that I appreciated Rupp's book. It is really my article, writ large to book length and apply to life. It is a reminder of the lessons that I learned on the Camino, when the day to day stresses and pressures make them fall to back of mind, and the ways (although not the specifics) of how I learned those lessons.
As I read it, I nod and say "Oh yes, I remember that. That's important." It takes me back to the Camino - not to the places, which many other memoirs do, but to the lessons, which, to me, are more important. I may not agree with everything she says but (at least so far), enough of it resonates and revives that it seems quite worth reading.
