Camino Contradictions
Walking the Portuguese Coastal route produces paradoxes, and here are the ones it handed me
Paradoxes of the Camino
Millions have walked it, and I’m not going to pretend my takeaways are unique. But what struck me was how many of the things I learnt contradicted each other. I went looking for clarity and came back with a list of contradictions.
You walk to escape modernity, but modernity is what helps carry you
The main lesson from the walk was the value of peeling back, rather than adding.
So many of society’s ills come from excess. Too much choice, too much distraction, a constant stream of notifications. We’re drowning in it. Removing things, rather than adding them, is a way to find our humanity, then slowly layer the essentials back in, using them as tools rather than consuming them mindlessly.
The walk forces that on you. You carry only what you need on your back, and you learn how little that is.
But it would be perilous to do it without modernity. Nature is unpredictable and can be dangerous. It is largely through human intervention that it becomes more navigable and less unforgiving. Nature is the thing I came for, and the thing I needed protection from.
Of course, people walked these routes long before modernity. But they also endured levels of hardship that most pilgrims only taste briefly.
The wild, rolling hills past A Guarda in Spain are beautiful, but they are also exposed with no facilities. Then, five kilometres on, there is a shack selling albóndigas, friendly faces, running water, and warmth.
And it isn’t just the shack. It was my backpack, my shoes, the boat that carried me to Spain, the paths cut into the hillside, the waymarkers keeping me on track, the phone in my pocket for when I got lost. Used as tools, these things are miraculous.
The energy and industry behind these tools and systems are often treated as something to apologise for. I don’t want to minimise the negatives, but the other side deserves attention too. I have never been more grateful for electricity and running water than when I didn’t have easy access to them.
Strangers can reach you more deeply than close friends
In day-to-day life there is so much pressure to perform. The constant low-level surveillance of our apps and keeping up appearances.
The walk strips that away. It is raw; you see people tired, blistered, at their worst. But that is also when their deeper character shows, and in some respects, seeing people stripped back like that is seeing humanity at its best. It is the superficial that keeps us stuck in small talk.
There is nothing wrong with small talk, but the more memorable interactions come from reaching closer to the core and being honest and unguarded. A stranger, in this regard, can offer the same depth as a close friend, because the barriers are down, everyone is exhausted, and there is no future to perform for. The social pressure is gone, and you can simply be present.
Some of the greatest moments of joy were small interactions with strangers, people who likely had no idea the moment meant anything at all. Something said in passing, something funny, a brief exchange that stuck with me for days.
The truth is, this depth is always available to us. The core is easier to reach when we stop taking ourselves so seriously and worrying about how we appear, which is easier said than done.
The destination is the point, and the destination is an anticlimax
Having a destination matters. It is what gets you walking, what shapes the route, what gives the days their direction. But it is the journey that is most rewarding.
Arriving in Santiago is, for many people, myself included, an anticlimax. It is a lovely town, a magnificent cathedral, steeped in history. But the thing I had been walking toward for days was not the memorable part. The memorable part was everything in between.
The Camino provides
People told me before I left that “the Camino provides.” It sounded woo. It turned out to be true, though not in the way it is usually meant.
What it provides is the conditions for small, incredible patterns to form. Everyone is walking toward the same destination, on different paths, at different speeds, and these paths weave in and out of each other. That weaving becomes a kind of living pattern, full of coincidences and near-misses.
The uncool thing is the freeing thing
Walking is often seen as uncool, something you do when you can’t do anything faster.
But fitting into what is culturally “cool” is, to me, one of the more depressing things about life. Doing things on your own terms is what feels most freeing. If you want to walk, do it and own it.
There’s an obvious parallel to my normal investing commentary here. Following the crowd is usually the wrong move, or at least not the optimal one. The same independence of mind that makes walking feel freeing is the thing that, in markets, gets rewarded.
You only know joy if you’ve known its opposite
To truly experience one emotion, you need to have felt its inverse. To enjoy the meal you need to have been hungry. To feel achievement, there has to have been struggle. To feel joy, you have to have known pain.
What comes out of this is an unexpected appreciation for the emotions we usually label negative, because you learn that they are temporary, and that they exacerbate the high. A warm meal and a hot shower, after the hunger and the aching of the walk, is pure bliss. But the high subsides quickly too.
You are often the source of your own discomfort
Eating alone, walking alone, it can feel exposing. You catch someone glancing at you and assume judgement. But you never actually know what that look meant. They might be lost in their own head. They might be wondering the same thing about themselves. The discomfort isn’t really coming from them, it’s coming from you. And once you accept the discomfort instead of fighting it, it stops having a hold on you. That’s the liberating part.
What the walk handed me
You walk to escape modernity, but modernity is what helps carry you. Nature is the beautiful thing you came for, and the dangerous thing you need protecting from. The destination is the point, and the destination is the anticlimax. Strangers can reach you more deeply than close friends. The “negative” emotions are the ones you end up grateful for. Stripping things away is what makes you feel fuller. Doing the uncool thing is the freeing thing. You are often the source of your own discomfort.
The walk didn't hand me answers, it made me more comfortable holding things that don't resolve.
