This article is reprinted by permission from NextAvenue.org. “If you are going to doubt something, doubt your limits.” A card on my desk reminds me of that every day. In April, I walked a section of the Camino de Santiago celebrating my 75th birthday after having spent my actual birthday in bed with COVID.
The night before the walk began, lying awake in the hotel room in Vigo, Spain, I said to Marcia, my friend and traveling companion who is also 20 years younger than I am, “Do you have anxiety too?” “I think we’re up [a] creek,” she said. And she burst into tears. The Camino is a network of ancient pilgrim routes, named after St. James, whose body was found in a field in Galicia and transported there in a boat led by angels 800 years after his death. I’ve no attachment to religion, and I didn’t have a religious experience while I was out there, just my trekking poles sounding out the rhythm of my pace. Yet at the end of Day 1 and almost 15 miles, I wasn’t the same person who’d started out. Looking across to Marcia at dinner that first night, I said, “I’m happy.” I could feel a smile spreading across my face and I felt hopeful in a way I haven’t in such a long time, like my life was opening up again. As for so many, the pandemic w …
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