I found while walking the Camino I became very sensitive to sound.

My hearing became finely tuned.

During my months of training, and in all the years I've been walking, I've always listened to audiobooks on an iPod.

I chose not to on the Camino.

I wanted to use the time to think, without interruption. Without distraction. I took my iPod, loaded to the 16GB max with books and music, but that 100gms of weight never came out of the pack. Not once. Not even on the plane home.

An unintended consequence of this is that I noticed my hearing improved. Or at least, it became more sensitive to sounds.

I heard birds. I heard streams and rivulets I couldn't see. I heard the wind.

I heard.

But I also heard things I didn't want to hear.

Cars coming up behind me sounded disproportionally loud. They would whoosh past me and they were violent. That's the word that kept coming to me as a car screamed past. Cars are violent.

My issue with the influx of pilgrims from Astorga on wasn't that they were short-cutting the Camino, or that there were so many of them, it was that they were loud.

Their laughter to me seemed like shrieking, and their footsteps sounded like soldiers with boots on the march.

That's what upset me the most, the noise they were making.

My hearing had become so sensitive, and attuned to the natural sounds of the Camino, that extraneous sounds were almost painful. And at times they were disturbing.

I'd become to regard the sounds of The Way as sacred. Church-like. You don't shriek in a church. You don't talk loudly. You don't clomp your feet. You respect where you are.

As a filmmaker, I understand sound. Not many people realise that when you're making a movie, you spend more time collating and editing sound than you do image. It's way more complex.

There is no such thing as silence. It exists in space, and in hermetically sealed environments, but nowhere else.

The Camino was never silent. There was always a cacophony of sound, if you cared to listen, even on the Meseta.

Especially on the Meseta.

I listened.

Now, many of my most wonderful memories are of things I heard. The cuckoo birds. The rush of water by the track outside of Samos. The wind on the high plains. The distant sound of cowbells in misty Galicia.

My camera enabled me to see, but in not using my iPod I was able to hear.

I forgot to mention the biggest little change of all –

Nothing scares me now.

Nothing.

I've already mentioned a big change since walking the Camino – I no longer need glasses.

But I've also noticed little changes.

Since coming back, I now keep my mobile phone on silent. I can't handle hearing it ring. And if I miss a call because I haven't heard it, I don't care. I used to obsessively respond to my phone. Not anymore.

I don't do Facebook anymore, either. Not like before.

Before the Camino, I'd have posted at least four to six times a day. Since returning, I've posted perhaps maybe six times in five weeks. It seems folly now. And ego driven.

Also, I used to always put the alarm on at night. The house is securely locked, but still I would always arm the security alarm. Not anymore.

Personal grooming – I used to use moisturiser each day. Didn't on the camino. Haven't since. And I still haven't put a battery in my razor.

Little changes. They actually mean big things…

In his groundbreaking book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, mythologist Joseph Campbell established the concept of the “Hero's Journey.”

Essentially, what Campbell did was he examined classic myths from various cultures, and using concepts gleaned from Carl Jung, came to his monomythic theory:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Okay, let's apply that to a pilgrim who leaves home to walk the Camino.

The hero (pilgrim) as Campbell describes in his book, starts in an “ordinary world” and gets a “call to adventure,” to enter an “unusual world of strange powers and events.” The hero/pilgrim then must face a “road of trials,” some of them intense and requiring assistance from others.

The hero/pilgrim ultimately must face a severe test, and if he or she survives, is then granted a great gift, or “boon.” The hero/pilgrim must then decide whether to return to the village, or the “ordinary world,” to bestow this gift or boon on the rest of the community, or the world.

There are so many parallels with someone getting the “call” to walk the Camino, a strange world of unusual powers and events – facing a road of trials, having to overcome an intense challenge, and receiving a gift before returning home.

But, one of the essential elements of the Hero's Journey is returning home. Returning home to bestow the “boon” on those that he or she left behind. This is for the betterment of the home, the village, the community and the world.

In times past, reaching Santiago was only half the journey. The other half was walking back home. Very few pilgrims do this now. I saw about 6 doing the return journey on my pilgrimage.

But some, even when they do return home, remain on the Camino.

Before the Camino, I used to wear glasses. I wore glasses for 15 years.

Now I don’t need them anymore.

Something happened on the Camino.

I used to need glasses for my long distance sight. I took two pairs with me on my Camino – my regular wire-framed glasses, and a pair of prescription Polaroid sunglasses.

Early on I discovered it was too much trouble to wear the regular glasses because I was forever taking them on and off when I was taking photos. I did though at times need my prescription sunglasses, so I wore them for about a week, until they broke. I had to throw them away.

I still needed sunglasses though, not only to stop glare (yes, I was lucky with sunny days on my walk!), but also to keep dust out of my eyes when the wind blew.

I didn’t have time to wait around for an optician to make up a new script for sunglasses, so I bought a €45 pair of normal Polaroid glasses. I began to wear them.

I discovered that I was able to see perfectly fine. Detail in the distance began to come into focus. Soon I was able to read signs that I couldn’t have read without prescription glasses.

What happened? Two things, I think:

1. I relaxed. The Camino relaxed me, and took the tension not only out of my body, but out of my eyesight. When the muscles in my eyes relaxed, I was able to see better.
2. I began to exercise those muscles in the same way I was exercising other muscles while walking the Camino. My eye muscles had become lazy with glasses. The optics did all the work for them. When I had to use my eyes without the aid of prescription glasses, they responded.

Today I drove 600kms – it took me 8hrs. Usually when I drive such long distances, my eyes get tired and I need my glasses, otherwise I get headaches. Not today. Only when I was driving into the setting sun late in the day did I put on my €45 Polaroids – the ones I’d bought in Spain.

It seems now I don’t need prescription glasses anymore.

Thank you, Camino! 

Bill

POST SCRIPT: 

Further to the previous post about my life a month on from the Camino…

My wife (wise soul that she is) pointed out that whether or not I put a battery in my razor is not the point – if it simplifies my life by making shaving easier and more pleasurable, then why not do it?

Simplifying your life, she said, doesn’t necessarily mean contracting your life, or reducing the world around you. On the contrary, she said – simplifying your life can lead to a most wonderful expansion of your world, and your experiences. 

You can give away all your possessions and still be bound up in complications.

When I thought about what she said, I made an analogy to cooking – you reduce a sauce down until it explodes with a myriad of tastes and flavours.

You’ve simplified, but you’ve expanded.

I regard simplicity as keeping only what matters. My wife Jennifer regards it as taking nothing for granted. 

I mentioned to someone in an email just before that I’ve come back from the Camino with very little interest in social media. Before the Camino, I was all over Facebook and Twitter – posting every day on a diverse range of subjects that interested me, and I assumed interested my “friends.”

What in fact I was actually doing was telling the world what sort of person I was.

If I posted on a political matter, and I expressed outrage, then I was announcing that I was a concerned liberal. Or if I posted on a rock concert I’d attended the previous night, I was telling everyone I was “cool,” and not the age I’m purported to be.

I came back and saw clearly the folly of all that, and the unabashed ego…

I was in two minds to delete my Facebook – I’m just not interested anymore in someone telling me what they had for lunch, or seeing a photo of their new pot plant. In the end though I’ve kept it for work reasons. But I’ve noticed that since returning, I have a very real disinclination to be distracted by trivia.

I’ve come to see that simplicity is about shedding burdens, whatever they might be, so you can leap mountains.

Bill

It was two months ago, on April 10th, that I left St. Jean Pied de Port to walk the Camino.

A month later, on May 10th, I arrived in Santiago de Compostela.

I’d walked all the way.

June 10th and it seems another lifetime ago that I walked through those ancient gates heading to Roncesvalles. So much has happened since. So much has changed.

What’s changed?

I’m not sure I can articulate it, other than I can’t bring myself to put a new battery in my razor.

In a much earlier post, whilst on the pilgrimage, I’d written about how complicated my life had become, to the point where I needed to put a battery in my razor to have a shave. And each blade for my Gillette Fusion Power Razor cost $5. For one blade.

At the time I asked myself: Where has the simplicity gone? 

Now at home, this daily act of shaving has become very symbolic. Will I keep shaving with a cheap disposable razor? Will I pay $32 for a pack of 6 new blades? Will I put a battery back in my Gillette Fusion Power Razor?

In other words, will I return to the life I once lived, before the Camino? Or will I continue to hang onto those things that I learnt on my pilgrimage.

Which is to live life simply.

Be grateful.

Be humble.

Don’t judge.

I’m organising a garage sale. I’m giving stuff away to St. Vincent de Paul.

And I’m not putting a battery in my razor.

Bill

I’ve decided on my next Camino –

From the lighthouse at Sagres, on the far southern tip of Portugal, up through Lisbon and to Fatima, then onto Santiago and then to the lighthouse at Finisterre.

About 850 kms.

Now I have to do just three things:

• Figure out when to do it.
• Make a film in the meantime.
• Fix up my knee, because I still can’t walk properly.

Bill