Dreams:
After Walking “El Camino de Santiago” in 2016, I fulfilled one of my dreams. This walk changed me in ways I could never have imagined. Nothing earth chattering, just everyday ways to approach life in the “real” world”. While walking El Camino one is familiar with many symbols. My favorite, and one that has a lot of hidden meaning is “la flecha amarilla” or yellow arrow. The yellow arrow shows us “the way”, the path to follow so we don’t deviate. We depend on these arrows, or we would not know where to go and would get lost, it reassures us that we are on the right track. We almost panic when we don’t see the arrows. In “real’ life, how do we find our way, what moral arrows do we follow? Another symbol is the “Mochilla” or Backpack. As we prepare for months to walk El Camino, we struggle with the backpack. We feel that we need everything to make it through. But once we start walking day after day, we realize that we must carry this heavy burden and how many things we can do without. In life, we carry a backpack that sometimes gets too heavy, we constantly add things that we don’t need. What can we take out of the backpack of life to make our burdens lighter? A very useful item while walking, because you will get blisters, is “La Tirita” or Band-Aids. Blisters, wounds, and pain are part of El Camino. Your body starts aching, your feet get blisters, and you realize how hard El Camino is. When we make it to our daily destination, we are different people, stronger than when we started. Like life, we must learn to deal with pain. “El Baston” or the walking stick, which helps us while walking can be compared to the special people we meet in El Camino. People that encourage us when the days are hard, when the rain won’t stop. This is a very important lesson, who are the people that serve as a walking stick in our lives, how can we be a walking stick to others when they need us? And finally, “the Viera”, Scallop Shell. Pilgrims carry a Scallop Shell which represents a changed life, a return home of a changed person. Whoever wears his shell is saying to the world the desire to serve and love the rest of humanity.