Your Camino is just that, YOUR CAMINO! Your personal emotions and feelings on arrival in front of the Cathedral, after so long and arduous a pilgrimage should be YOURS and not those of a demographic, or other group association.
I recommend that as you approach Santiago, coming down Monte de Gozo for example, reflect on your original reasons for undertaking this journey. You have perhaps 90 minutes remaining until you are in front of the Cathedral in the Plaza de Obradoiro.
Reflect on the preparations you made, your expectations before you started, and how the Camino and the many people you have encountered along YOUR WAY have affected you. Consider the person you believed yourself to be BEFORE you started, and the person you believe you have become.
This is NOT Euro Disney, or some other tourist or entertainment venue where your entire experience, including the emotions they want you to feel are imagined or manipulated. This is the REAL, AUTHENTIC, pilgrimage from the Middle Ages. Your emotions on arrival are intended to be your personal and private emotions. They are public, but only to the extent you choose to share them with others.
Yes, the final 500 meters or so, walking through the ancient city towards the Plaza de Obradoiro can be bittersweet; but, only if you permit it to be. I respectfully suggest and recommend that you, instead focus on the accomplishment of a long and difficult journey.
Take it from the hundreds of us who form the core, veteran membership of this Forum, you HAVE changed. Some of the changes are apparent now. Others will not come to you until you return home and try to rejoin a culture and society that "does not get it."
Frequently, it is only after some weeks that the dichotomy of pilgrimage, your journey, and the effects it had on you begin to bubble to the surface. Learn from these realizations. Revel in the changed outlook you may well have on the world, writ large. You may well find that you are a new, improved YOU.
Personally, I find that the "Real World"is rather insignificant and largely irrelevant after I have walked another Camino, or worked as a volunteer for a month. I return home refreshed and with a new, more removed outlook toward my life, outside the Camino. I ALWAYS get more out of my
Camino de Santiago (CdS) experiences than I put into them. Also, I always leave, not wanting to depart, and eager to return.
For millennia, people from all races, faith systems, and political beliefs have walked the many routes of the
Camino de Santiago, as well as other major pilgrimage routes to both religious / holy places and to secular destinations for thousands of years. There are pilgrimage routes in Asia many hundreds or thousands of years older than the CdS. People all over the world continue to practice these sacrifices and walk long and arduous pilgrimages to this day.
While the largest tranche of pilgrims on the various CdS routes may well be Christians on a varying degree or depth of a religious pilgrimage, they are by no means the entirety of pilgrims headed for Santiago. Particularly since its designation by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, after more recently, following the popularity of several films and books, the numbers of pilgrims has surged.
People walk these pilgrimage routes for all sorts of reasons. They come from all points of the compass and from all walks of life. However, once they are on the Camino, they all have a singular focus...to arrive at Santiago. The simplicity of that statement, and the import of it are more evident the more you consider the statement. it reminds me of the official motto for the United States of America "E pluribus unum." Translated form the Latin, it means "out of many, one."
Nuff said, welcome to the group of veteran pilgrims...!
I hope this helps the dialog.
