Emma McNamee

Day 7 | Torres del Río to Logroño | 20km 🥾

Today was a fairly uneventful walking day, but the little story I tell in the Reel about the man I met at the café yesterday stayed with me. I’ve heard so many Camino stories about people meeting on these paths and finding something they weren’t looking for. Friendships that last years, people who change their lives, move countries, start businesses together and, of course, plenty of Camino weddings. There is something about these stories that makes you wonder about the moments in life that arrive unexpectedly, yet somehow at exactly the right time.

Sometimes a person appears and makes you see a possibility you hadn’t considered, or brings a feeling to the surface that you have been trying not to acknowledge. Maybe the universe can arrange the meeting, but we still have free will.

We get to decide whether we stay where we are because it feels safe, or take the leap towards something we cannot yet see clearly.

Perhaps that is where so many of us get stuck. We wait for certainty when sometimes all we are given is a feeling. That quiet knowing that something matters. That pull towards a person, a place, a different life or a possibility that doesn’t quite make sense yet.

We can spend so much time asking whether it will work, whether the timing is right, whether we are imagining it or whether we will regret taking the chance, that we forget to ask the other question:

What might I miss if I don’t?

Someone can open a door for you, and perhaps the timing of that door opening is completely beyond your control, but walking through it is still a choice.

The man in my story did exactly that. He didn’t know where the feeling would take him. He just trusted it enough to find out.

And maybe that is the real leap of faith. Not believing everything will work out exactly as you want it to, but trusting yourself enough to take the next step when you don’t yet know where the path leads ❤️

Camino Francés | Day 3 | 20.4km 🥾

Day three is always one of my favourite days because something starts to shift. The first couple of days are about finding your feet, getting used to the backpack, the early mornings and the rhythm of walking, but by day three people seem to relax into it and the conversations begin to go a little deeper.

This is when I start becoming curious about the real reason people are walking.

There is a common assumption that people walk the Camino de Santiago because of religion, but that is only one reason, and for many people it has nothing to do with it. People come here because they are grieving, because they are celebrating, because they are at a crossroads, because they need some space to think, because something in their life no longer feels right, because they want to challenge themselves, or sometimes simply because something inside them said, GO!

And I think there is something really interesting in that.

How often do we actually stop and ask ourselves what we need, rather than continuing with what we have always done?

The Camino gives people permission to do that. You have time to walk, to think, to talk and, perhaps most importantly, to listen to yourself without all the usual noise around you.

But you don’t need to walk 800km across Spain to do that.

Sometimes we know exactly what is asking for our attention in our own lives, but we are so busy filling the space that we never give ourselves the chance to hear it. We keep moving because stopping might mean having to acknowledge something we have been avoiding.

Maybe that is why people arrive here with one reason for walking and discover another along the way.

The path has a funny way of giving you time to hear yourself properly.

And perhaps the question isn’t always why would I walk the Camino?

Maybe it is simply, what would I hear if I gave myself enough space to listen? ❤️

Let’s be honest, I probably live 99% of my life like this now 😂

I wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I would feel that little nudge towards something and then spend far too long wondering whether it was sensible, realistic or something I should actually be doing.

These days, if something in me says go, I GO!!

I don’t always know why and I certainly don’t always know where it’s going to take me, but I’ve learned that when I trust that feeling, it has a rather brilliant habit of taking me exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Some of the best things in my life have started that way. A decision that looked completely random from the outside, a sudden change of direction, a plane ticket, a conversation, an opportunity that arrived out of nowhere and I could have talked myself out of if I’d given myself enough time. Looking back, I can see how often one small f’ck it became the beginning of something I couldn’t have planned. Somehow, they’ve always taken me somewhere I needed to be.

And I think that’s what I trust now. I don’t need to know exactly where something is going before I say yes to it. I’ve learned that when that feeling comes, I can either follow it or spend months wondering why I didn’t.

I’d rather find out.

So if you’ve got that feeling about something right now, and you keep finding reasons to wait, maybe give yourself a little less time to overthink it. You might already know.

F’ck it. See what happens ❤️