When you are a pilgrim your mindset changes. Because you have to carry everything on your back, you reconsider how much you accumulate. For example, a beautifully designed Italian dress called me from inside a boutique, off a side street from my hotel in Porto. It is sales season after all. It was so tempting to buy it.
I even asked, “Can I buy things in the store and have you ship them to my home in NYC?” The saleswoman, a demure lady in her 20s, looked at me apologetically and says if the shopkeepers who are responsible for these decisions were here they would be able to tell you. Although it took a bit of detachment, I could feel the Velcro crinkling from my passion to own beautiful things. But in the end, I walked away. Ten minutes later, I was occupied with other details of the journey which bus company drives closest to TUi and how to buy a ticket.
Pilgrimage forces you to hold on to things that you believe are absolutely essential and discard those things that weigh you down. Material things weigh us down. In fact, you will get punished if you choose to accumulate instead of shed.
That’s what happened to me. My stupid attraction to chatchkis and knick knacks worth a euro here and there piled up to weigh a whopping extra 2 kilos that’s five pounds in my mochilla. To get rid of the load, I opted to have them shipped via the Correos to the tune of 40 euros. Paying close to $50 for things that are worth less than $20 is not wise. I have learned the hard way.
Even my need for food has been tamed, sort of. The more I walk the las I obsess about did. My appetite to eat has been replaced by the revving up of the muscle machine that functions better with less to weigh it down in the tank. Everything about the pilgrimage cries to be lighter, freer. While traversing the earth, the body stretches itself to reach beyond itself.
As I move from one place to another, the transience of the pilgrim’s existence (one day in one hotel bed on the coast another day in another hostel cot with four strangers in the room) imparts a sort of gleaming that everyone and everything is transient. Away from home, my cell does not ring. I receive a reduced trickle of emails. I am forgotten in the land of the living. The churning landscapes mixed with the whisking scroll of almacenes, parking lots, houses and houses outside the bus window add to the sense of mutability, of the sheer inevitability of change. Ta panta rei, Heraclytus cries.
As a pilgrim you are forced to consider your own transience. So many wander through here the very spot you stand on and yet none remain.
A pilgrim is forced to hold less to dwindle chisel his preoccupations to the most simple a warm bed a wholesome meal a hot shower these are the joys of the journey. A pilgrim is diced to be humble. A chair or a gentle shade is cause enough for celebration.
On the Camino you realize you and everyone else is just passing through. We do not belong to the world though we tread through it.
We are all pilgrims. Just passing though. The most we can hope for is a buen camino.
