Anyone who has been to MEA will recognize that as one of Chip Conley’s favorite questions.
The first part of the question was unsettling to me. Ten years from now, I will be 93. I might not even be here. If I am, I won’t be able to walk the Camino which has been calling me for a couple of years. Like the Hero in Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, I was hearing the Call to Adventure. But, like the Hero, I kept refusing the call.
I’m too old (maybe). I don’t have enough money (that’s true). I don’t have enough time (that’s not true). Then there were the “what ifs.” What if I get lost? What if I can’t find a place to stay? What if I get sick? But the dealbreaker “what if” was: What if I get halfway, or less, into it and just can’t do it and have to quit? How could I stand the humiliation?
Richard Rohr prays for one humiliation a day to keep him humble. He hopes it will be a mild one. This one would not be mild for me. I’m not including it in my prayers.
But the question kept haunting me. I don’t want to be on my deathbed with two columns in my head, one labeled “I’m Glad I Did,” and the other labeled “I Wish I Had.” I don’t want my “I Wish I Had” column to be the longest.
So I’ve purchased my plane ticket to Madrid, departing April 14. I will go to Oviedo and walk the Camino Primitivo to Santiago de Compostela—200 miles over 16 days.
Why?
My initial, somewhat superficial, motivation was to do it as a fundraiser for my nonprofit organization, Breaking Age. I wanted to make a statement: “It’s Never Too Late to Do Big Things.” That’s followed by, “Your big thing might not be walking the Camino. It might be walking around the block, joining a club, reading a book, or doing anything that gets you out sharing your gifts and wisdom with others.”
That fundraiser is still active. If you’re inclined to support my adventure (remember when I said I don’t have the money?), you can do it here: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/donate-to-its-never-too-late
But a deeper reason has emerged. As I studied the Camino, one piece of advice kept appearing: Why are you doing this? Get that right, and everything falls into place.
While the fundraiser is important, my real reason for walking the Camino is to take it as a spiritual pilgrimage, as it’s meant to be. I will be exploring four questions that I should have spent more time on in my early years (regret), but my answers will probably be more meaningful now:
- Who am I? You’d think I would have figured that out by now. Maybe I should say, Who am I NOW?
- Why am I here? NOW.
- What is most important to me? NOW.
- What is non-negotiable in my life? Richard Rohr quotes Archimedes who said, “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I can move the world.” If I can get those first three questions right, I’ll have a place to stand that doesn’t change according to the needs of my ego.
Why do you have to go all the way to Spain and walk 200 miles to do that? Can’t you just do that at home?
For the same reason I’ve gone to an MEA event every year for the last six or seven years. It’s a paradox that life gets in the way of figuring out what life is all about. Some things require us to get away from the daily demands of our life to figure it out.
A Chinese proverb says, “That which will not quite kill you will make you strong.” I will come back either a lot stronger or dead—I hope the former. But I know I will get better acquainted with myself after walking 15-20 miles a day and arriving at the beautiful cathedral in Santiago. I will go into the cathedral and stand in front of the burial place of St. James, one of Christ’s apostles. I will touch his life-size statue.
Maybe I’ll learn to cry.
-Pat
Pat Whitty is the founder of Breaking Age, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people flourish in the second half of life through Connection, Wisdom, and Purpose. Based in San Antonio, Texas, Pat is a seven-time alumnus of MEA and brings a passion for reimagining what’s possible as we age. Through Breaking Age, Pat is building a community where people don’t just grow older — they grow better.