I’m an adventurer, thrill seeker, and life enthusiast with a shorter life expectancy than your mother’s cat - Follow my never-ending journey.
Pilgrim Tales - is a series of posts on my journey along The Way of St. James. An 800 kilometre trek across the North of Spain. Read about the adventure, the mishaps, and the strange yet inspiring characters I met along the way.
Would you take sexual advice from a virgin?
Despite what the Catholic clergy might preach, I didn’t think so.
Nowadays everyone and their cat is an expert on something. This is especially true when it comes to your dreams; people will line up to tell why you can’t do it.
Why is that?
To find out, let’s go back to my very first adventure…
I sat in the passenger seat of a tiny Renault old-timer. The driver, Bernard, had picked me up from the side of the road, and together we drove towards Bergerac, a small town east of Bordeaux.
I told him about my plan to walk 800 kilometres across the North of Spain on an ancient pilgrimage known as The Way of Saint James (El Camino de Santiago).
Bernard said he had always dreamed of doing it, but now that he was 68, he believed he was too old. I asked him why he hadn’t done it sooner? To which he replied:
It’s too dangerous to walk alone.
You get blisters, tendonitis, back and knee problems.
The route is too exposed, which leads to sunburn and heat stroke.
You might get lost in the mountains.
Besides, I don’t speak Spanish.
Without much effort he managed to recite a list of reasons why he hadn’t done it, and why I better not attempt it.
That night I crashed on his couch, but I couldn’t sleep because his list of reasons kept playing through my head. That is, until I realised the exact same thing had happened to me a few days earlier…
I was at home.
I had told my parents about my plan to hitchhike through France. My father, Peter, said I would either die from malnourishment; I would die being run over by a car; or I would die at the hands of a creep looking for an easy victim.
Yet five days later I was in the south of France, sleeping on a strangers couch, and miraculously had not experienced any rape attempts at all. I figured, if my parents view was such a horrible misconception, than maybe Bernard’s view wasn’t accurate either.
So I decided to take a leap of faith.
The next day I stood in Saint Jean Pied de Port, the starting point of the pilgrimage. It is a small bustling market town in the foothills of the Pyrenees, which creates a natural border between France and Spain.
I met Jack, a 40-something accountant from England, who — like me — was about to start his pilgrimage. He looked extremely competent; trail gators around his ankles, two high tech walking sticks in his hands, and a huge fanny pack tied around his waist that seemed to fuse with his potbelly.
When it came to the Camino — as he called it — he was dead serious. He had been preparing for months, and had perfected his hiking kit with painstaking precision. I told him that I was untrained, that I had two very skinny legs, and that I planned to start tomorrow.
He looked like someone just peed in his cornflakes.
You will quit within two days. And if not, the blisters and injuries will force you to quit within two weeks. I’ve been training for three months, you can’t just show up and walk.
I pretended to take his advice to heart, but I had made up my mind: I was going to walk the Camino. The next morning I took off on the six week journey. I got blisters, I got knee problems, I got sunburnt and dehydrated, I even got lost several times, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as people told me it would be.
I met a 70 year old woman who carried her cancer-ridden body across Spain, a silent man who walked the entire country barefoot, fell in love with an Australian woman, and uncovered a secret community of pilgrims living at World’s End.
The experiences I had on that first adventure sparked a desire to constantly try new things, to always be aware of possible misconceptions, and, most of all, I developed a love for being wrong.
If I had listened to any of the naysayers - Peter, Bernard, or Jack - I would never have made my dreams come true, and I would still be slaving away making someone else’s dreams come true.
So why are people so quick to dismiss your dreams?
Well, most people focus on why something isn’t possible. They focus on the obstacles in their way. And to be honest, this makes sense; to avoid obstacles you have to know where they are, right?
Wrong.
A friend of mine is a downhill mountain biker. He races down trails littered with trees and other obstacles at insane speeds, and somehow he manages not to become intimate with any of them. I figured he must have incredibly fast reflexes.
I asked him how he does it, and he said:
You don’t focus on the trees, you focus on the open spaces.
That was an eye opening moment for me. I realised that whatever you focus on is what you swerve towards. If you focus on the obstacles, you’ll run into them. If you focus on how something might be possible, then that’s what your mind will move towards.
That just leaves one question.
What do you want to do?