A pilgrimage road in northwestern Spain, leading to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
People come from all over the world, with or without faith, each carrying their own reason and simply walking forward.
Many are looking for something religious. Others have reached a turning point in life and hope to find something.
The reasons are as many as the people. But what everyone does is the same. Walk. That was all.
I also set foot on this path.
But the night before I started, wrapped in a sleeping bag in a cheap guesthouse in Portugal, I could barely sleep.
“Can I really walk more than 300 kilometers?”
That question sat in my chest, and even with my eyes closed, unease crept up slowly from somewhere deep inside.
The next morning I put my pack on my back and took the first step.
Through towns, across fields, following the yellow arrows, I thought, "Maybe I can actually do this."
But that confidence quickly broke down within a few days.
The pain in my back, the blisters on my feet, the relentless sun overhead.
Just thinking, "Is this really going to continue every day?" was almost enough to break me.
A Quiet Allow
The hours walking alone were not simply silence.
On a long empty road with no one to talk to, I noticed I was muttering to myself.
At first it was just to pass the time. But slowly it changed into words of encouragement. "A little further." "You are okay."
It felt like a new friend had been born somewhere inside me, and I walked forward carried by that voice.
What had been loneliness slowly became time to grow closer to myself.
The more I walked, the more memories came back that I would never normally think of.
Small conversations with my family. A moment laughing with a friend. The dinner table at a friend’s home in England where I stayed before coming here.
Pieces so ordinary I had never once noticed them, rising up one by one with each step.
It was not quite nostalgia. It was more like something being called up from inside to hold me up.
With each of those moments, I wanted to say "thank you."
And when I actually said the words out loud, something inside my chest came loose.
Happiness is not waiting somewhere past the finish line.
That moment when gratitude came up on its own was already happiness.
To feel grateful is proof that you are already full.
When people feel only lack, they forget gratitude.
But when "thank you" comes out from somewhere honest, it means you have noticed what you already have.
Which means at that moment, you are already inside happiness.
A nostalgic place I've never been to
The Way to Ponte de Lima
The road was still hard.
Some days I passed through small villages with no shops at all, and had no choice but to keep walking hungry to the next town.
When my stomach was empty, food was all I could think about. But sitting down on the road changed nothing.
“There’s no choice. I just have to accept it.”
That was all I could tell myself.
It felt less like a fight against hunger and more like a fight to convince myself to keep going.
Once, heavy rain soaked through everything until my body went cold and my legs stopped.
At that moment, an old woman from a house along the road called out to me.
She brought me under her roof and gave me some water. Nothing more than that. But something deep in my chest let go all at once.
“Even the smallest act of kindness can make a huge difference.”
The thought loosened the tension in me,
and tears nearly came.
Sometimes, cars passing by would honk just to cheer me on,
the drivers waving their hands.
Just a few seconds of signal.
But knowing that someone saw me was enough to push me forward.
In solitude, it was these small moments
that kept me walking again and again.
Loneliness. Hunger. Cold rain. The kindness of people.
These were not just things that happened. They were a test asking, "How will you take this in?"
The same experience could mean something completely different
depending on how I received it.
Some things can only be seen inside pain. Others can only be felt inside kindness.
In the end, the state of my own heart decided everything.
As I kept walking, I began to wish I could be like a baby.
Crying when I wanted to cry,
laughing when I was happy,
sleeping when I was tired.
Just accepting the world in front of me as it was.
The older we grow,
the more comparisons and reasoning come first,
and it becomes harder to take things in simply.
But with every step, I felt those things falling away.
My heart grew lighter not because I gained something,
but because I had let go of what I didn’t need.
The sunsets along the road,
a passing smile,
the ordinary moments.
None of it was special. But the closer my heart came to empty, the fresher everything looked.
“Maybe this is what it means to live,”
I could feel that, because the scenery and the moments reached me straight.
– Camino Portugués –
Camino Portuguese
The Camino never went the way I expected.
Schedules fell apart. Predictions were wrong.
But that uncertainty was the very nature of the road.
Not trying to control what happens, but learning to steady how you receive it.
That was the only thing that kept me moving forward.
Looking back, this road was a journey and at the same time a pilgrimage of the heart.
The more than 300 kilometers were not only a path through landscapes,
but also a path that dug deeper into my inner self.
Through solitude I became friends with myself,
through hardship I discovered gratitude,
and by letting go of what I didn’t need, my heart grew lighter.
The answer I reached in the end was surprisingly simple.
Happiness exists in the moment when "thank you" comes out on its own.
When gratitude comes, a person is already full.
The road I walked carrying that feeling, from the start to the end, was always inside happiness.
Santiago de Compostela
