In 2013, an Australian man a few months shy of turning 60 decided to walk the Camino de Santiago – an 800km pilgrimage trail across the top of Spain. He had no known religion, and absolutely no idea why he felt so deeply compelled to do this torturous walk.
But compelled, he was.
He completed the walk, battling a “triumvirate of pain” - a knee that he later discovered lacked any meaningful cartilage, a blister the sight of which would make a grown man weep, and shin-soreness that felt like his lower limb had been split with a mountain axe wielded by a demented troll.
Arriving at the end of the Camino, the majestic cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, he expected an epiphany – an answer to the question he’d been asking himself every day: Why am I doing this?
But no answer came.
So when he got home he wrote a book, hoping the answer would reveal itself in his scribblings. The result was The Way, My Way, a humourous and self-deprecating book that many consider the best memoir ever written on walking the Camino.
The book has now been made into a film, and it’s an extraordinary account of a man at a pivotal point in his life, searching for meaning and finding himself undergoing a fundamental transformation so profound that he now divides his life into “Before the Camino” and “After the Camino.”
It’s a story particular to one man, yet of appeal to anyone seeking a greater meaning from life.
