Notes from My Camino Part 1: The Gift of Spaciousness

The Gift of Spaciousness

Hard to Sum Up in a Sound Bite
When people ask me, "How was your Camino?" I don't have a simple answer. It was a multilayered experience that I'm still processing.

I spent more than two weeks walking over 225 miles across northern Spain on the Camino Primitivo, one of the ancient pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela. For more than 1,200 years, pilgrims have walked these routes, originally for religious reasons. Today, people come for many purposes: reflection, healing, physical challenge, spiritual seeking, or simply the chance to step away from everyday life and reconnect with themselves.

I came home with pages of journal notes, hours of voice recordings, and many stories I'm still trying to integrate. Walking for several hours each day gave me uninterrupted time for thinking, feeling, meditating, praying, and simply being.

“One word captures this journey better than any other: spaciousness." 

One Word Says It All
One word captures this journey better than any other: spaciousness. Not just physical space, but emotional, mental, and spiritual spaciousness. Even more specifically, it became a journey within my Camino to learn how to receive that spaciousness.
 
Before leaving for Spain on June 5, life had become kind of insane. I had to submit the final draft of my third book by June 1st. I made the deadline, but it was painful. I also trained for Hyrox, and my partner and I won our age group at the New York City Hyrox during the last week of May. That was a different kind of pain—but also joyful. Finally, because I was going to be away for a month, May was packed with client commitments to make the gap as seamless as possible for everyone. And, as we all know, living in New York City automatically earns you membership in the "I'm really busy" club.

Then suddenly, I was sitting in my hotel room in a small village in Spain at three o’clock in the afternoon with nowhere to go and nothing I needed to do. And I found that surprisingly awkward and uncomfortable: even though it was the very thing I had been craving for months.

In those first several days, I found myself analyzing how well I was "accomplishing" my Camino and looking for ways to fill the hours after each day's walk. I read. I wrote. I explored my surroundings. And I'm embarrassed to admit that, on day three, lingering thoughts about whether I was being productive enough led me to watch a LinkedIn tutorial on persuasion techniques. I couldn't easily let go of my instinct to optimize the experience. It took me nearly a week to stop treating the Camino like another project. Only then did I begin to receive the spaciousness I had come looking for.