It was the end of my tenth Camino de Santiago (or, as I call it, Santiago X).
Usually, the Camino ends in Santiago de Compostela. But for some pilgrims, the real ending lies further west, in Muxía or Finisterre – small, windblown towns by the ocean, about fifty miles beyond Santiago.
And so there I was, at Finisterre. Finis terrae. The end of the world, according to the Romans.
After hundreds and hundreds of kilometres, I had finally reached the lighthouse and the iconic KM 0 mojón (which isn’t actually in town, but another four kilometres past it, up a steady, punishing hill). That’s where the path ends. Where the journey ends. Where everything ends.
And in that moment, it felt like the best of all possible worlds. Or maybe the worst.
Let me explain.
I had my Cuban cigar with me. You know, that one special cigar I had been saving for this exact occasion. I had finished the Camino. I had no injuries, no real problems. I had met wonderful people along the way. On paper, it had all gone perfectly.
But.
The heat was brutal. The kind of heat that makes the horizon dance. There was no shade anywhere. The sun was merciless. I could barely keep my eyes open and my skin was burning. Flies swarmed around me, drawn to the sunscreen on my skin. And the Cohiba, my long-anticipated, carefully preserved cigar, had gone soft and sour.
In that moment, I felt a wave of unexpected anger. I had waited so long for this. And everything was ruined.
But then, something shifted.
That feeling of irritation, of thwarted expectation, turned into something else. A quiet, unexpected reflection.
I realised I had a choice. I could dwell on what was wrong, or I could honour everything that had gone right.
That, in the end, was the true lesson of Santiago X.
Life brings both. The beauty and the disappointment. The joy and the nuisance. Often, side by side. Sometimes even tangled together. But we are the ones who decide what to hold on to. We can focus on the good ones, or on the bad ones. And that choice is ours.
That’s what I carried home with me.
And I guess that lesson alone was worth a few hundred miles of walking.
