In the Camino you don’t advance always at the same speed. Some days you walk 30km and other days you walk just 15km. Then there’s the odd days in which you don’t walk at all.

Whatever the case, every day is important for they all add to the experience: with the longer walks you see the distance to the final objective, Santiago, shorten significantly, and you feel empowered by the might of your own body; the shorter journeys allow you to slow down your pace and to take a closer look at the surroundings, its inhabitants big and small, the people walking alongside and around you… You take it all in. You breathe it all in in deep big gulps.

The non-walking days though are probably the most precious, since you wouldn’t be able to walk at all without them; they make possible the continuation of the adventure ahead.

Every day is equally important in its own right, for they all give you something different. Obviously, there are better and worse days, terrible days and others which go perfectly fine. But it’s precisely the sum of them all that makes for the Camino the unforgettable, unregrettable, unparalleled whole experience that it is.

Arguably it’s due to its limited duration (about a month or so) that the appreciation of the pilgrim’s life is enhanced. But why don’t we aspire to perceive the events of our everyday life in equal terms? To accept our hectic days and our lazy days, our ups and our downs, as just necessary moments of our existence?

Eventually, we will get to where we need to go. We will reach the end of the journey sooner or later. Santiago is going nowhere. Neither is our end-day. What matters is what we make of the time it takes us to get there.

And every step, every second along the way it’s a meaningful part in the Camino that is our life.