Longing for the Way

A year.
A year ago, I was getting ready to embark upon a grand journey.  I was not ready, but I was going anyway. It's a little difficult to wrap my head around the fact that it was a year ago.  Camino visions still flood my mind, and my dreams.  I get this far away feeling whenever I'm driving by myself or walking along a trail.  I have these flashes of faces and places, and I remember that for 40 days the way was my home.
I also remember how hard it was to leave home, and how good it was to return.  I remember the weariness and the grind of the Camino.  I am not forgetting the suffering involved, but I'm missing the experience.  I'm trying to adopt the pilgrim mind in other areas of life, to fully experience each step and each moment, to be open to people and events as they come my way.
It's only working in fits and starts.
I admit, the Camino did not re-shape me as a person the way I thought it would this time last year, but it did change me.  The thing is, I'm not sure it is for the better.  My mind is restless, and my feet itch (figuratively, not with athlete's foot).  I'm not even sure that leaving tomorrow for another Camino would solve it, in fact, I suspect it would only make it worse, it would increase the intensity of the visions and the frequency of the "itch."
Part of the problem is that I have these ideas that I think would scratch the itch, but I can't (or won't) put them in motion.  Part of the problem is that I feel like I need to force my mind and spirit onto the Way, half measures and little applications don't work (or maybe they do, but I'm impatient with them).  The Way taught me how impatient I am, and how I long to be in control.
I never thought of myself that way, but now I recognize it in my wants and in the dreams of the Camino that haunt me, they're all about being stalled and stuck in a place: Madrid, Santiago, random places whose names are fading into the mist of memory.  In the dreams, I can't leave; I want to, I need to, my backpack is ready to go, I shoulder it, and start out the door and something keeps me from walking.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," sang Janis Joplin. That's the thing about the Camino, is that you are out of control of so much, that little victories, like hot showers and finding a place to sleep, or a really good meal, or even a chance to get laundry done, they all seem like accomplishments.  You don't think about taxes and mortgages and doctor appointments or any of the things that become necessities of adulting in the modern world.  Your concerns are more vital, and you realize that, for the most part you could do without any of it if you really had to.
We tell ourselves that the secret to happiness is more stuff.  The Way punches holes all in that presumption.  Here, I always want more stuff.  I play my guitars and I think about wanting more guitars.  On the Way, I was overjoyed to borrow whatever beat up old guitar the Albergue might have on hand and wrestle it into tune and pluck away at old beat up strings.  Here, I'm always thinking about the next batch of stuff I want to buy, on the Way, I thought a lot about all the stuff I wished I didn't have in my pack.  You get the idea.
Here's the thing: the Gospel should teach us this stuff, about how things and security and worldly power are all just dross and nothingness.  Most of us don't have the cahones to actually try it on for size.  The Way lets you do that, in what you think is a temporary way, a discrete period with a beginning and an end where you agree to suffer the privations of the road, and live with the discomfort of less.
What you don't realize going in is that there is joy on the Way that you will crave, and which will make the things you think you should value seem like rubbish.  I understand what Paul said when he said, "Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ." (Philippians 3:7, NRSV)  The Way teaches you first hand, in your physical, mental and spritual experience, how this works.  You can't weasel out of it, or hedge your bets, the sun, the wind, the aches and pains, the very dirt under your feet, not to mention your fellow pilgrims will force you to confront the Way of the Cross and dying to yourself.
The trade off is that it wakes you up to something else, and that something else is revealed as the truth that is worth more than everything else.  When you wake up to that truth, even for a very short time, you will ache for more of it, always.