Choose Your Own Adventure

Everyone's Camino Is Different

When I was a kid, I loved reading the children’s book series, Choose Your Own Adventure. The books are written in a format that, to quote Wikipedia, “are written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions and the plot's outcome.” The first half of the book would set the scene and when you would reach the middle, you would have many options (some even have up to 42!) to choose from for how the book would end. Oh, it was always so much fun to read all the different ways a story would play out. I would read all of the options of course but I felt like I had some power to determine my own destiny in the story by choosing which ending I would read first. I really loved the mysteries but the travel was my favorite.

Well, thinking about these books got me thinking about life (or vice versa, I really don’t know which thought I had first) and how right now, it feels like doomsday when you read the headlines. Banks are failing, the awful Russian/Ukraine war is still carrying on, inflation, climate change, and in the US we are about to hit another Presidental campaign cycle in the not-so-distant future which means those awful political advertisements will be flooding every media, and social media outlet available. Good Lawd, someone please start a protest on Capital Hill about those things. I’ll join in with a homemade sign.

It appears the bad news isn’t going to stop anytime soon either. Ratings and advertising dollars apparently make the globe go round. So it can feel like the world is spinning out of control if you listen to the talking heads. It’s easy for me to get depressed over this stuff if I look at it for too long. So when I remembered these fun books from my childhood it made me think about our own personal choices within the bigger context. And how, even though I was a kid without much power in my own life (I mean, our parents and school dictated everything from our clothes to our bathroom breaks back then, jeez), I still got to choose how these books ended. That tiny bit of control made a big impact on me.

Storytime…
I have told this story before in a shortened version (click here), so I’m expanding on it. It’s an important story, especially in times like these, so I want to tell it again.

You all know by now that I absolutely love hiking the Camino. Well, here is a little story from my first El Camino de Santiago in 2018 about a woman I met during the final 100km (62 miles) walk into Santiago and how she changed my perspective on life.