full & empty

what a ride it has been. or rather: what a walk.

as i mentioned at the beginning, there was no donkey in tow, carrying my burdens. no horse either. just my own two feet, day after day, step after step, carrying both body and my soul across the north of spain. and how heavy it sometimes was & is (i mean my soul). plus all the extra luxury items in my backpack!

today’s departure from negreira felt different. the air was cooler than it had been in recent days, and the morning was wrapped in fog. as if i needed to pay more attention to truly see. softer around the edges, less defined, inviting a different kind of seeing. and i walked in the opposite direction of everybody else. on my own camino.

like yesterday, i walked without music. no prog rock, no salsa. no distraction.

just the sound of my footsteps, the rhythm of my breath, my heart beating strongly, and the quiet conversations with myself that emerge when there is nothing left to drown them out.

i tried to walk each step consciously. not rushing toward the destination. yes, to santiago, but there is no destination, really. not counting kilometers. that is done by my watch anyway. simply setting one foot in front of the other.

my soul feels full of emotions. many of them at the same time. and among them, strangely, is a sense of emptiness. seems like a paradox. but, the longer i walk, the less contradictory it becomes.

maybe emptiness is not absence. maybe it is space. space cleared of noise. space cleared of certainty. space in which something can and will arrive.

a readiness for what is to come. for new fragments of time lived well. for unexpected encounters. for deeper connections. for meaning that cannot be planned. to unfold. for purpose that reveals itself gradually rather than being pre-defined, pursued actively and directly.

walking teaches patience in this regard. the path never unfolds all at once. it only offers the next few dozen meters. the rest remains hidden around the bend, behind the hill, beyond the horizon. trust, don’t look at the map. just walk on.

life may not be so different. where will my camino de la vida lead? i do not know. and increasingly, i feel no urgent need to know. i will not force the answer. i will not wrestle it into existence. there is time & space. space = time. paso a paso y todo a su tiempo. fragment after fragment.

instead, i will approach what comes with attention. with curiosity. with openness. with the willingness to be surprised. because the truth is, that i am never standing still, even when i appear to be. constantly changing. constantly experiencing. constantly shedding old versions of myself and growing into new ones. no longer forcing myself to stay still.

engaged, whether consciously or not, in this endless process of becoming. perhaps that raises another question. when people speak of feeling at home, what do they really mean? is home a place? a person? persons? memories? a destination?

or could home be something less fixed and more alive? could it be that home is found within change? could it be that the process of becoming is itself a kind of home? a space, time that moves with us wherever we go. a place that asks for trust, for faith rather than certainty. a place that is never finished because neither are we.

can i learn to be at home with change? can i welcome uncertainty without immediately trying to resolve it? can i belong not to a fixed identity, anchored in the past, in a definition stamped on the outside, but to the unfolding within? the change itself? unfolding to be free? to feel home. i do not yet know.

but somehow it feels as though the question itself may already be an answer. sort of.