pat.holland said:
It has made me wonder 'Is it that these lessons were ones we were or could learn anyway but that the Camino has helped us to learn them sooner/faster/better?'
pat.holland said:
I exclude the lesson about architecture but many of the other lessons, and those mentioned in a thread called one year on under misc topics are the sort of lessons that we tend to learn as we go through life. Many of them are about coming to terms with life and with changes, changes beyond our control. So I wonder are many of us going to the Camino to have a space in which to deal with, process, come to terms with change ?
Yes, these are themes we revisit time and time again during our life, it's true, in all sorts of serendipitous ways. After all, change happens all the time, or should, surely, in a developing person. But yes, I think we are using the Camino as a support for change.
Interestingly the first time the Camino came into our awareness, through a friend, we paid it little attention! But four years ago we were gripped by it. Consciously I think we were attracted by the challenge - having an aim for an adventure, with a spiritual, historical, cultural focus.
But this was a time when my career was beginning to cause stress problems, and Peter was pretty fed up with the ME/CFS which clearly was not going to depart from his/our lives. We had a big family of teens and young adults who were delightful but sometimes demanding. We needed to nurture ourselves, individually and as a couple. That first stage, cycling from Hook of Holland to Reims, was a gift of time and space which nourished us in all sorts of ways. We didn't know that it would, but it did. Since then we have been more conscious of how the Camino supports us through our difficulties, and so that has definitely become part of the reason for going. But we do not find the same things each time, nor do we look for them. We really enjoy not knowing what is going to turn up!
When I went off sick last November ( a month after returning from our 2009 stage) I was very low, and had a yearning to pack up a backpack and go off to Spain immediately, just to walk for weeks. I knew really it was not the right time, I was just wanting to escape something, and I was not strong enough. (Nor was Peter) But when we decided (only in February, I think) to go in April, it was because we were both feeling better, and aware that decisions and changes were being forced on us, and wanted to go, not to have the space to think and make decisions, but to be nourished and fortified for whatever the future held.
We have all met people on the Camino who are there with a particular focus - a recent bereavement, a relationship breakdown, a desire to make a new start in life. It would be interesting to hear how life moved on after the pilgrimage.
...?