Speaker A
I am currently walking the Camino de Santiago. I thought it would be nice to share the things I’ve felt, seen, and experienced here, so I turned on the camera. Walking a long distance of 800 km on my own two feet. And having to
A personal journey on the Camino de Santiago exploring life, pace, and the meaning of living gently through pilgrimage.
Key Takeaways
- Living at one’s own pace is valuable and liberating, especially in a competitive world.
- Pilgrimage is as much about inner discovery and mental clarity as physical endurance.
- Community and compassion among pilgrims are central values on the Camino.
- Slowing down enhances appreciation of nature and life’s simple moments.
- The pilgrimage provides a unique space free from daily worries and distractions.
What the video covers
- The video documents a solo 800 km pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago, emphasizing personal reflections and experiences.
- The journey challenges physical limits but reveals deeper insights about life and living gently.
- The narrator contrasts their previous life pace with the slower, mindful pace of the pilgrimage.
- Early mornings and communal routines at pilgrim hostels (albergues) shape the daily rhythm.
- The pilgrimage fosters a sense of community, care, and mutual support among walkers.
- Walking slowly allows the narrator to appreciate nature, local villages, and moments of peace.
- Physical hardships like blisters and fatigue are part of the experience but overcome with determination.
- The pilgrimage offers a rare mental clarity and a break from daily anxieties and distractions.
- Despite initial doubts, the narrator feels a strong desire to repeat the pilgrimage.
- The experience inspires a lasting desire to live more gently and mindfully even after returning home.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Setting Out on the Camino
- 01:06Reflections on Living Gently
- 02:07Daily Routine and Pilgrim Life
- 03:00Adjusting to One’s Own Pace
- 04:40Community and Compassion on the Path
- 05:32Appreciating Nature and Walking Slowly
- 08:00Challenges and Perseverance
- 10:26End of the Journey and Reflections
- 11:40The Joy of Pilgrim Community
- 12:24Mental Clarity and Lasting Impact
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
walk 20 to 30 km every single day, it feels like quite a challenge, doesn't it? So, before I started this pilgrimage, I thought it might be a challenge to experience the limits of my body to the fullest, and that’s
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what I had in mind when I came here. But, turns out, that’s not it. I realized this path is a process of constantly discovering what life is, what living means, and what my own limits are. While running a podcast
Speaker A
called the "Live Gently Movement Headquarters," the value of life I pondered and thought about was the value of living gently. I want to live a little more gently. Instead of living a rigid, intense life, I’ve been constantly contemplating and
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challenging myself with the question: How can I live more loosely and leisurely while taking care of myself at the same time? Ironically, on this rugged and difficult journey, in my steps toward Santiago, I have found my own sense of direction and methods for
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what it means to live gently and how to actually do it. So, I’d like to share those thoughts with you. Actually, the first thing I felt was that I used to think I lived quite diligently back in Korea. I thought I was living a very
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sincere life, but while walking the Camino de Santiago, I really felt that there are so many people living even harder than I am. So, the journey of this pilgrimage goes like this—it starts in the early morning. People wake up around 5 a.m. and start packing
Speaker A
their bags. Then they quickly grab breakfast and head out onto the path. I’m also someone who wakes up quite early. I wake up around 5:30 a.m., pack up diligently, and leave around 7:00 a.m., but there are people who get up
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and leave even before I do, like at 4 or 5 a.m. Well, there are probably many reasons for that, but the hostels for pilgrims, called "albergues," in the next town fill up very quickly. So some people walk fast to book them in
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advance, or because the sun is too hot, they prefer walking at dawn to stay cool; everyone has their own reasons.
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There are quite a lot of people who get ready and leave that early, and looking at them, I realized there's just no way I can keep up with them. Honestly, there was a bit of despair and frustration that came from that. But
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the feeling that grew even larger than that was, "I'm just slow, so what can I do about it?" Walking slowly, packing slowly, getting ready and starting slowly—it’s all my own pace, so I think I should just follow it and go my
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own way; I’ve been practicing going a bit slower. I have to practice this quite consciously, but in my life, it was always natural to match others’ paces and feel a sense of competition, thinking, "If others are fast, I have
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to be faster." Since others are going fast, I should go faster too. I need to keep up, so I should probably run a little. I was used to trying to match people’s speeds and do better, but here, what if I am just slow? Trying to
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instill a sense of relief that it’s okay to get up at my own pace and walk at my own speed—and not whipping myself too hard—has become a kind of effort and a challenge for me. So, while walking the Santiago pilgrimage,
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cathedrals often appear along the way. I would put my bag down at those cathedrals to rest or attend services, and at one of them, they were handing out these papers. There were cathedrals that gave out papers for pilgrims and
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had us read the phrases written on them. The phrase I saw at that cathedral that I still remember is: "We, the pilgrims, will not ignore those suffering or in pain behind us just so we can walk faster." It was a sort of
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pledge for pilgrims, and that sentence really touched my heart. Actually, while I was walking, I was so exhausted that I just collapsed onto the ground.
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As I was resting there, people would come up to me and ask, "Are you okay?" "You’re just taking a rest, right?" "You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?" Everyone—really, every single one of them—asked me that. It means that going faster, overtaking others, and
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walking ahead aren’t what’s important; people on this path value the idea that no one gets hurt and that we all walk to the end together without anyone suffering. Actually, I could walk faster if I wanted to, but since a
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pilgrimage involves walking 20 or 30 kilometers, villages and cafes appear along the way, and the nature itself is just so beautiful. Grassy fields, spaces where horses are. Then, a river might suddenly unfold before you. These spaces themselves are truly beautiful,
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but if I walk too fast, I really can’t properly feel and enjoy them. But the things you see when you walk with a little more peace of mind. I have been walking for three hours now.
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I see horses in the distance, but they’ve disappeared. To live slowly means to walk a bit more slowly, or to walk at my own pace—not caring how others walk or what they look like, just doing it my own way. That’s what
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living slowly is. I feel like I’ve never experienced such a clear mind in my life before. My head feels clear and at ease, so even though my body is tired, I want to see this path through to the end. I feel that if I keep going,
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there’s something I’ll gain. Yes. The path continued. Bye. There were many farewells, and a very long path stretched out endlessly.
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In some villages, when I had absolutely no energy left, I would take a bus, or use the donkey service to carry my bags, but I kept walking. My big toenail came off, and a huge blister formed on my
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left foot. Wow! I wanted to walk to the very end. I was curious about what would be at the end of this. Done. We finished the journey. I walked to the end with Hyunsun, whom I met on this
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path. We took a commemorative photo, but I didn't shed any tears. I couldn't quite figure out what I had learned or what exactly made it so good. With those feelings, we headed to Portugal.
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Was it after about 15 nights in Portugal? We looked at each other and said at the same time, "I want to walk the pilgrimage again." I wanted to go back. What could be the reason? With that curiosity, I picked up my camera.
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I mean, even if you’re not talking or close with them, everyone wakes up at 5:30 in the morning. The people at the albergue—everyone is rustling around packing their bags, turning on their headlamps, and just...
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all these people, in the morning, packing together, grabbing a bite to eat, and setting out on the road at dawn...that itself is such a pleasant feeling. I think.
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Yeah. That’s right. Exactly. It feels good. Yeah. When I say it feels good, I don’t mean "hee-hee," but just...this kind of feeling.
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This feeling. You know, there’s always labor and a reward provided. Even within the 6 or 7 hours of walking 25 km, effort and reward happen continuously, and finishing this whole path is a reward, too. It’s nice that it keeps happening so well. Because in
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our daily lives, rewards don’t always come that easily. Right? Living day by day. And to be able to have no thoughts for 30 whole days like this.
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Yeah. To have a space where no anxiety or worries can intrude. This experience itself feels quite special. Especially for Koreans.
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True. So, like us, other people also wanted to do something here. There was something like that. Like wanting to do a certain project. The older girl who went with us wanted to make a T-shirt and was thinking of a slogan for it.
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There were things like that, and Nukkae said they’d do a "lantern project," but I didn’t have any thoughts or feelings while I was walking. I was just walking. It was like I had turned into a stone, and since I kept
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repeating the routine of coming back, washing up, and sleeping, I sometimes wondered, "Why am I doing this?" Hmm. But looking back after walking for all 30 days, what I realized was that I...
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I really needed that experience of doing absolutely nothing. I realized that this w
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Hmm. Whether in Korea or anywhere else, for the last 10 years or so, my head has always been full of something. That something was probably desire, like, for instance, wanting to go to university or wanting to become a
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writer. Or wishing I had more YouTube subscribers. Those kinds of desires. Because of the anxiety and fear caused by that, I was constantly working hard and racking my brain as if I were being chased by something. Hmm.
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Even when no one was refueling me, I kept draining my own energy, living with burnout as if it were a habit.
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But while walking here, I didn't check YouTube even once, and I didn't write a single line. Well, I wrote something, but I didn't write anything I could call a novel or an essay.
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Hmm. And I didn't have any thoughts about wanting to create or achieve anything, and I wasn't anxious or afraid either.
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While I was walking here. And I realized that I, who had never experienced that kind of clarity in my life, had finally experienced it here.
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I felt that just that alone was a huge takeaway for me. I also thought that I wanted to keep feeling this way. Even back in Korea, I want to...
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I want to experience that state of having no desires. Hmm. That’s right. The pilgrimage.
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The fantastic state of comfort I felt there was something I had been longing for for a long time. Freedom from anxiety and desire. It was the freedom to just exist, with no reason to become anything or not become anything.
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Everything.
Topics:Camino de Santiagopilgrimageliving gentlymindfulnesspersonal growthslow livingself-discoverytravel experiencemental claritycommunity
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