Addiction: No
Obsession: First time yes but next time no
Something else: Yes
For me, the first Camino came at exactly the time that I needed it the most.
I had finished a major project around a year earlier. This project had absorbed almost all of my time and energy for 10 years. The project was my purpose and my identity. Through the project I was able to contribute and this gave me my personal "worth" and purpose. It was interesting and pushed boundaries and so it made me "interesting" and somewhat "unique", it provided my identity.
Then it finished.
I had a plan for what I would do when it finished but that plan crashed within a couple of months and so I went to plan B. Plan B was to get a job using the leading edge skills and knowledge that I had developed during the project but the skills are very specialised and by then I was aged 65 and I found no one was prepared to employ me.
I no longer had a purpose and my identity changed from someone doing interesting and leading edge research to just another retired guy bumbling around in his garden.
I still had my friends though and I would sit down with my best friend and fishing buddy and we would plan trips and activities that we could do together when he retired next year.
Then he died unexpectedly from a rare complication from a common and relatively safe surgery.
I was lost.
We did at least get one of our "grand" trips together with our wives before that happened and I am thankful for that.
I tried to develop my interests and I joined a local hiking club. On one of the club hikes I overheard two ladies talking about the Camino and my ears pricked up. As I listened to them discussing their plans for the Camino it called to me.
That day, even though I knew almost nothing about what walking the Camino entailed, I knew that I would walk it. Not only would I walk it but I would (metaphorically) walk it with my friend. It would be a chance for one last great adventure together and a way of saying goodbye and letting go.
As I set about planning for the Camino, getting fit and getting the equipment that I needed I had a purpose and a razor sharp focus. I purposely purchased a flight 10 weeks out so that my questions for myself were along the lines of "how do I get this done?" Rather than "can I do this?" I did this because at the time the thought of me walking 800 kilometers seemed impossible and certainly when I talked to others about it they thought that I was crazy.
My focus got me there despite a couple of diversions that life threw at me like a broken tooth two weeks before I left and then a Kidney stone attack 10 days before I flew out.
About half way through the Camino I had an email conversation with my youngest daughter about having a purpose in life as she was off in Canada and having some issues with direction as well, when I realised that I had a purpose and an identity!
My identity was a Pilgrim and my purpose was to walk.
It is a very simple and very clear purpose, each day I get up and I walk. At some stage I stop to drink or eat but then I walk some more until it is time to stop for the day. Then I find a place to sleep, to clean my clothes and my body and to refresh. If I am lucky then I also get to talk to some interesting people doing something similar.
The next day I do exactly the same thing. Everything that I need is in a small backpack that I carry with me. This seems like the essence of life, unencumbered by complicated plans, stuff that I accumulate or any need to conform to someone else's ideas of what I should be doing.
This simplicity and clarity of purpose and identity is what is so attractive.
As I neared Santiago I got slower and sadder. I had another conversation with my daughter and I confessed that I was seriously considering not coming home to New Zealand.
In the end, I did go home but with the certainty that I would return the following year for an even longer stay of five to six months (I have dual citizenship with the UK and that is soon going to be almost worthless so I may as well use it while I can).
But then, of course, Covid 19 came along and that plan disappeared.
During lockdown here in NZ at it's tightest, we were confined to our house and the immediate vicinity and during that time, for some reason, the attractiveness of the Camino pilgrim identity and the purpose of walking has waned. I am not sure, perhaps I am suffering from cabin fever even though we are now free to do almost anything in NZ as we have no community transmitted infection and no real restrictions.
Perhaps I now see that the Pilgrim identity is a fiction and perhaps my purpose now lies elsewhere.
I am not sure anymore.