The *real* reason for walking the camino-To escape and hide?

[Anonymous]

Still waiting for the opportune moment when everything aligns before I set out....made me ponder the real reason of why I'd want to do this...and I realized that it's really to escape, the get away, to put behind the failures, heartbreaks, disappointments, lies, deceptions, backstabbings, betrayals, lost hopes, unfulfilled dreams....

I have had some mini-trips, last one being a few weeks ago where I travelled cross country from Istanbul to the eastern borders of Turkey on local buses, and at no time did I miss my old life with the items listed above. Returning to the routine life brought the dark thoughts back, now putting in time until the next trip.

Walking 900 - 1000 kms end to end and side spur trips, 60 days, to escape, to forget albeit temporarily, to live and enjoy each day like it's my last (one day it will be), the feelings of euphoria as reality doesn't matter....then to return to the issues that I ran away from. The issues and responsibilities and other things that age us too soon.

I now realize that as exciting as the pilgrimage will be, it won't be different than a warm perfect summer day sooner or later giving way to a winter blizzard.

I can't escape reality. May even feel worse as the memories of Spain and the freedom haunt and compare.

Anyone know what I'm talking about? :?

 

[Pieces]

maybe you won't come back to the same. Maybe you will come to terms and come back for a fresh start. The camino changes people...

You can't change what is, but you can change the way you feel about it and the way you respond to it. The camino is the perfect place for such a process...

Buen camino
Pieces

 

[Deleted member 3000]

Small changes are more likely than large ones. Small expectations minimize disappointment. There are many tales of unmet expectations for a Camino, sometimes even destroying the experience! Personally, I keep it small.

 

[LTfit]

Both Falcon and Pieces have made good points.

I don't believe that the Camino 'changes' people as such but rather how we view our life and circumstances. The experience may give you a new set of glasses in which to view the world. That is at least what I have noted.

Small steps, one at time, can lead to significant long-terms changes.

The Chinese philosopher Lao-Tse stated it more eloquently: A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a first step.

And heck, we are all escaping something!

 

[CaminoGen]

Both Falcon and Pieces have made good points.

I don't believe that the Camino 'changes' people as such but rather how we view our life and circumstances. The experience may give you a new set of glasses in which to view the world. That is at least what I have noted.

I, for one, realized how little I actually needed to be happy and it made me reconnect with nature. The joy of the wind hitting your face...

And heck, we are all escaping something!

Yep, my boring, non-eventful life.

 

[sillydoll]

Thousands of pilgrims in the middle ages walked for exactly those reasons! To escape their dreary lives or to hide for those they wished to escape.
Nothing has changed in a thousand years!

 

[Pieces]

actually, to answer your last question.

I don't consider my way to the camino as running away from something as much as running towards something.

I have travelled a lot, and had reached a stage where it just couldn't really get big enough. Having just returned from a (very dissapointing) trip to Thailand I started planning the next trip choosing between island hopping the carribean and mountain gorillas in uganda, not really able to make up my mind.

I had almost setteled on the caribbean and was in the middle of researching hotels in jamaica and choosing islands to visit when (seemingly for no reason at all) I asked myself why exactly it was that I was about to spend a fortune going half way around the world. Why did I kep chasing the ultimate, always returning home dissapointed ? Was the ultimate really out there or was I actually "running away" ?

This led me to go over my very best memories, and realising that they always included other people, and while trying to solve the puzzle of what best to do to meet people (which is sometimes, but not always, really hard when travelling alone) I remembered a book I had come across, but never read, some fifteen years ago. A book about something called The Camino de Santiago de Compostella.

Having the laptop allready on my lap I stated googling, and found myself reading excitedly all weekend. Then I started talking, and every time I would say "The Camino" I would get teary eyes and a lump in my throat (still do sometimes) and that really setteled the matter.

I didn't come home an entirely different person, but I did change, and I could feel by the way I was treated by people in the time after that they felt it too, even strangers acted differently towards me. I am still changed in many little ways, which may not be so little after all, and this year I am going back for seconds.

Point beeing, sometimes it is just really hard to tell if one is running away from something or towards something or if it is all just a matter of perspective. I chose to believe I am running towards...

 

[JohnnieWalker]

Still waiting for the opportune moment when everything aligns before I set out....made me ponder the real reason of why I'd want to do this...and I realized that it's really to escape, the get away, to put behind the failures, heartbreaks, disappointments, lies, deceptions, backstabbings, betrayals, lost hopes, unfulfilled dreams....Anyone know what I'm talking about? :?

Yes. But as there is no escape from the realities of our lives there is also no escape from the kilometres which we walk on the camino. Time to ponder the failures, heartbreaks and disappointments. Time to confront the lies, deceptions, backstabbings, betrayals, lost hopes and unfulfilled dreams.

Time to come to realise we are both victim and perpetrator. And in understanding we are both, time to try to forgive ourselves and others - then there is the promise of surprise, goodness, optimism, truth, fulfilment of hopes, friendship, loyalty and the deepest and most peaceful sleep after a day of walking.

Yes, pilgrim...we know what you are talking about.

 

[David]

Hi Alan, a good post - but it begs the question "why do you go back?"

If going back immerses you back into your personal hell then don't go back - go somewhere else, start a new life - just drop it, drop the past life like a heavy suitcase and walk on, walk on lightly to a new place, a new start, take how you feel when you are away back with you and live that, somewhere new.

Buen Camino pilgrim.

Coram Deo

 

[vagabondette]

I think everyone walks for a different reason and I think that reason probably changes before, during and after the camino. When I first started planning, my primary reason for walking was fitness. As it gets closer and I think about it more I realize that I'm hoping it'll give me closure on some things and open some doors on others. While I'll take it as it comes, my current plan is to pick a different topic or person from my life to meditate on each day. I will try to alternate between good experiences and bad and hope that in the end I'll be able to be closer to the good and let go of the bad. I know I have some experiences that I'm hanging onto that are negatively impacting my life and with some luck, I'll get some peace and be able to forgive and let go. Hopefully you'll be able to do the same. I'm also hoping I'll come out the end of this 4-month trip with some decisions about what I want to do with my life. I'm somewhat in limbo for another year as I wait for my dual citizenship to be completed but I'm tired of treading water...I need to make progress in my life.

Good luck to you.

 

[LTfit]

Time to come to realise we are both victim and perpetrator. And in understanding we are both, time to try to forgive ourselves and others - then there is the promise of surprise, goodness, optimism, truth, fulfilment of hopes, friendship, loyalty and the deepest and most peaceful sleep after a day of walking.

Yes, pilgrim...we know what you are talking about.

Hear, hear!

 

[David]

Vagabondette - I love that post!

Buen Camino.

 

[Labtails]

Vagabondette said it just right. I hope to move forward in my life in a positive way. Perhaps The Way can be the road that leads me in the right direction.

 

[Tukeram]

Throughout these forums I have seen lively discussion on pilgrims feeling cheated if they are refused admittance to a particular Alberger because of some reason or other or someone who disagreed with people who they believe drinking alcohol in excess on the Camino and so on.
I have traveled on several pilgrimages and hope to start one of the Camino's in early 2013.
From what I have learned on each of these pilgrimages I have traveled is that depending on the Aspirant/Pilgrim whether traditionally religious or not, you are released from your safety net, the security of your life long beliefs and traditions and without those safeguards of friends and environment to sustain the beliefs which you have built around you, the pilgrimage reflects them back to you in a way that forces you to be faced with the option of trying to hang onto those beliefs because you feel that they are being torn from you; or you can accept that it is the pilgrimage freeing you from all that mental baggage you have been carrying.
In the end it is only love that matters, the love with which you say what you say, with which you do what you do, the love and the song in your heart.

 

[evanlow]

Totally know what you are talking about.

The Camino may be the metaphor of life, but reality still beckons. You can't walk the Camino forever, so you either go back to reality, or change your reality.

For some, they change their reality (life), for others they go back to it (with changed perspective). I would to think that I walked again to reaffirm or recharge (like a battery) rather than to escape and hide. Just as finding yourself and losing yourself is very fine line, why can't it be both?

 

[Priscillian]

"If going back immerses you back into your personal hell then don't go back - go somewhere else, start a new life - just drop it, drop the past life like a heavy suitcase and walk on, walk on lightly to a new place, a new start, take how you feel when you are away back with you and live that, somewhere new."

Oh I DO SO agree with David on this one. You see, the Camino presents us with many experiences but not really a lot of choice, unless you count the wbhich albergue sort of thing. But "real life" presents us with so much: having the opportunity to reflect while walking (and after)can allow us the vision to see through the business/busyness of our everyday lives and give us the courage to make sometimes very needed changes.
Even here at The Little Fox I have more often than not seen pilgrims who have travelled a long way walk in with one idea as to what they think they want to do (and often no idea at all - some are just shellshocked to finish with nowhere more west to travel!) only to leave four days later quite calm and content and ready to make definite changes in their lives or to approach the Return with a very different attitude indeed. Most of the time this has nothing to do with me at all (though I have offered hypnosis to those who are still blocking - I am a certified practitioner and psychotherapist). It is the chance simply to rest and reflect in peaceful surroundings which seems to make these changes.
Don´t rush the "decompression" wherever you "finish" your Camino.