Taking Off the Armor

One of the things that the Camino does for you is it forces you out of your protective shell.  It doesn't take long to start noticing all the things that we use every day to insulate us from, well, just about everything.  Weather is usually the first thing you notice: sun, rain, wind, heat, cold, you notice and appreciate shade or a slight lessening of a stiff wind.  In a car, an office, or a home, you only notice the most severe climate disturbances, when you're out in it, small things really make a difference.
The next thing you tend to feel is the loss of privacy and personal space.  Especially since you spend most of your day out in the open with only the most voluntary human interactions, the crowds (and attending smells) can be a bit of a shock. But the physical proximity and shared spaces are not really the biggest challenge, it's the emotional strain of trying to live in that community without freaking out at someone.
Ultimately the biggest challenge is fear, specifically the fear that comes from not being in control of things.  On the one hand, you have great autonomy, you choose your distance and your speed, you choose where you stay and where you eat, you have no one to answer to but yourself and for a few days you think, "this is great!" And then you realize that something is missing.
It took me a while to figure out what was missing, but here's what I think it is: relationship.  And it's not so much just that you're lacking company, because there's plenty of that, but rather you are lacking trust of the people around you.
Here I'll just start speaking for myself, because I don't really know if this is true for all pilgrims, but for the first week or so, I still had my old habits of sizing people up and sorting them into categories: tourist, hippie, speed freak (referring to people who seemed driven to treat the Camino like a triathalon, not amphetamine users), etc.  My physical vulnerability was about all I could handle and I wasn't really able to be open (vulnerable) to the other pilgrims.
At some point, I remember realizing that I was living in fear, I was walking fearfully, I had some sort of anxiety about every hill, every meal, about every bed, every person I met, about every little need, and every challenge, and it was going to crush me.  I put the fear down, and it was the most important burden I could have unloaded.
Don't get me wrong, it still popped up from time to time, but I knew its face now and I would not let it climb back into my backpack, which was heavy enough.
This is when people started to come along side of Dad and I, people we liked (and a few we didn't care for very much), but all people with whom I (and I think we) chose to be open.  I'm not exactly sure when the hugging started, but among a certain core group of people, it became a habit pretty quickly.  Just in case you're wondering what the big deal is, you need to know that hugging a Peregrino is not something to be done lightly, we were not always clean and smelling our best.
It required a conscious decision to let go of my hangups.
But I'm glad I did.
I began to think of all the ways in which fear dominates our lives, and how all the armor and insulation that we work so hard to procure and keep in place, actually makes that fear worse.  Sure if you shield yourself with things, money, guns, walls, fences, titles, security details, even an army, you might think you're more secure, but you are also more afraid.
Here's a funny thing: about two weeks into the walk, I realized I had stopped fearing things that I thought were simply existential fears, not only did I stop fearing people, I was learning new things about welcoming whoever came along.  There were people that were easy to welcome, like Rodrigo, a Spaniard from Valencia, who had this wonderful smile, and infectious joy about him.  Rodrigo was  hugger from about the second time you met him, if he had seen you before you were an old friend.  But there were people who I didn't take to quite so quickly and had to learn that they too were part of my tribe.  I guess I learned first hand what Jesus was talking about when he told us it's really no great shakes to love the people that love you (and who you find likable).
Brene Brown has made some great points about vulnerability as a key to happiness (watch it here) and my experience bears that out.  What troubles me a great deal about coming back to the world is the many ways that we let fear run us, and the ways in which we minimize, numb and try in vain to ignore, negate and deny our vulnerability.  It kind of stings when I feel myself getting pulled back into fear.
I know it doesn't seem to make sense, but I am thinking that perhaps vulnerability may be more than a key to happiness and "whole heartedness," but it may also be an antidote to the fear and anxiety that grips us as individuals and twists and deforms all of humanity.