This is why I walked the Camino de Santiago: not to escape my future, but to stop missing my present.
In a few hours, I would leave South Korea for Europe to begin the Camino Francés: a roughly 1,000-kilometer walk from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, followed by the long road to Fisterra and Muxía on the Atlantic coast.
For 33 days, my life would become simple.
Walk. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.
At least, that was the plan.
At 4 a.m., nothing felt simple.
I was sitting in front of my 1.3-kilogram ultralight backpack, putting things in and taking them out again. I had done it so many times that I no longer knew how long I had been there.
A voice inside me kept saying, You should have prepared earlier.
To be fair, I had prepared. For three months, I had read Camino guides, watched packing videos, compared gear, and made lists. I had planned this trip carefully.
But preparation had not made the final decision easier.
It had done the opposite.
The more I researched, the more possible things I found to carry. The more money, time, and energy I spent on gear, the harder it became to leave any of it behind.
“This might still be useful.”
“But I paid a lot for this.”
“I went all the way across Seoul to buy it when I was already exhausted.”
Much of my gear had been bought with money I saved during my mandatory military service in South Korea, or in the small gaps between university exams. Every item seemed to carry its own history. I was not just deciding whether to pack a piece of gear. I was deciding whether the money, effort, and expectation attached to it had been worth it.
Maybe I would need it someday.
Maybe I would regret leaving it behind.
Maybe it would become useful at the exact moment I did not have it.
But this was the Camino. I would be walking day after day, over mountains, through villages, across rain, heat, and exhaustion.
On a journey like that, the main character was obvious:
My legs.
Everything in my backpack had to serve them. It had to protect my feet, reduce fatigue, keep me warm, or help me make it through another day on the trail.
Everything else—no matter how expensive, carefully chosen, or emotionally difficult to leave behind—was only a supporting character.
So I opened the backpack again.
I took out one of my three pairs of socks. I removed the cooling neck wrap I had panic-bought the day before because I was worried about the Spanish heat. Then I took out the brick-sized power bank I had packed out of anxiety.
The bag became lighter.
So did something else.
Preparing for the Camino—and Letting Go
Somewhere between removing the third pair of socks and putting the power bank aside, packing for a long-distance hike began to feel like sorting through my life.
We are always adding things to our metaphorical backpacks.
Experiences we think we need for a job. Courses we feel we should take so we do not fall behind. Certificates that might be useful someday. Relationships we are afraid to lose. Plans for futures we believe we need to prepare for immediately.
At 26, in my third year of university, I wanted to carry almost everything.
I kept calculating: Which experience would matter most? What should I study to make my future feel less uncertain? What opportunity could I not afford to miss? Who deserved more of my time?
I wanted to make the right choices because I knew I could not do everything.
Time and energy are limited. That is the uncomfortable truth behind every decision. To choose one path is to leave another one behind.
For a long time, that made me hesitate.
But that morning, I began to wonder whether hesitation was always a bad thing. Maybe it simply meant that something mattered. We do not spend hours agonizing over things that mean nothing to us.
I think overthinking can sometimes be another name for love.
Packing a backpack—putting one thing in, taking another out—is not so different from deciding what future to pursue, who to spend time with, or what to place at the center of a life.
It is not always indecisiveness.
Sometimes, it is evidence that we take our lives seriously.
Still, at 4 a.m., I was exhausted.
For a moment, I wished someone would grab me by the shoulders, knock me unconscious, and pack my backpack for me.
But no one comes to carry the weight of my life for me.
My life was my responsibility. My backpack was a weight only I could fully carry. In the end, it had to become my own design.
Before leaving, I had attended a small gathering to hear stories from people who had already walked the Camino. A Catholic priest there said something that stayed with me:
“Other than basic medicine, you can buy almost everything there. If you need something, just get it when you arrive.”
It sounded like more than packing advice.
Maybe I did not have to prepare for every possible future.
Maybe not having something today did not mean I would never have it. Maybe being unable to decide everything now did not mean the road ahead was blocked.
I had my passport, flight ticket, and train ticket. That was enough to reach the starting point.
I had a backpack, a phone, and healthy legs. That was enough to walk.
I had persistence, intention, and time. That was enough to keep going.
That was enough.
The goal of travel is not to leave in perfect condition. It is to meet the unexpected, find what is needed along the way, and let go of what becomes unnecessary.
So I decided to loosen my grip on perfection.
If my backpack became too heavy, I could give something away. If I needed something, I could buy it. If my plan changed, I could adapt.
More than anything, I did not want worries about a future that had not arrived yet to steal the joy of finally beginning.
Even after reducing my pack, I still carried many things.
But for the first time, I understood this:
To walk lightly does not mean owning nothing.
It means knowing what deserves to be the main character in your life.
“James, Enjoy your life.”
In 2022, I met someone I will call K during an extracurricular program. He was the manager overseeing our team. At the time, I was eager to do well. I wanted to make the most of every opportunity. I wanted people to see me as dependable, motivated, and capable.
One day, after a conversation I can no longer remember clearly, K looked directly at me and said:
“James, I think you need to enjoy life a little more.”
I laughed awkwardly.
I think I treated it like a joke because I did not know what else to do.
Then I went home and opened my calendar.
Almost every empty space in the week already had a plan waiting for it.
Study. Prepare. Apply. Meet someone. Research something. Plan the next thing.
I had heard plenty of advice about working hard. I knew I should prepare in advance, avoid missing opportunities, and make smart choices.
But being told to enjoy the process felt unfamiliar.
Enjoyment seemed almost irresponsible.
I worried that if I enjoyed today too much, my future self would suffer. I thought that relaxing now would create anxiety later. So even during breaks, I planned my next move. Even when something good happened, I rarely allowed myself to enjoy it for long before asking what I should do next.
K did not tell me much about his own life, but he gave me a sentence I carried for years.
Over time, it became even shorter.
James, enjoy your life.
It took me a long time to understand what that meant.
Preparing for the future and enjoying the present are not opposites. In fact, if we never truly live in the present, we may arrive in the future with no energy left to enjoy it.
That was part of why I chose to walk the Camino de Santiago.
I did not come looking for a dramatic answer to every question in my life. I came because I wanted to practice being where I was.
To pay attention to my breathing. To feel my legs carrying me uphill. To eat when I was hungry. To rest when my feet hurt. To look up when the landscape was beautiful.
Walking is the simplest way I know to arrive in the present.
Even on the flight to Spain, I struggled to stay present. I worried about whether my train would run on time. I imagined getting lost on the first day. When I received a message about a possible train delay in France, I felt panic rising before I had even taken my first step on the trail.
But few important beginnings in my life have been perfectly prepared. The timing of this trip—leaving the day after my final exam—was not perfect. I was not fully sure about the weight of my backpack. I did not know who I would meet, what I would learn, or how I would feel a month later.
And yet, I left.
I had my passport, flight ticket, and train ticket. I had my backpack, my phone, and—for now—healthy legs.
And somewhere inside me, I had a small willingness to meet the unknown.
That was enough.
The past had already passed. The future had not arrived. The only thing I could actually touch was this moment.
Breathing. Walking. Laughing with a stranger. Stopping in front of a view that made me forget to check the time.
I did not want to miss those ordinary moments anymore.
So before beginning this Camino pilgrimage, I decided to offer myself the same words K gave me years ago.
James, enjoy your life.
It is okay if I do not walk perfectly. It is okay if the plan changes. It is okay if I do not return home with a life-changing realization.
For now, my task is not to design the future flawlessly.
It is to place one foot in front of the other on the road already in front of me.
The person I become in the future is not someone I can meet only by preparing perfectly today.
He is someone I will encounter naturally after living today fully.
Why I’m Walking the Camino
This Camino is not a productivity project. It is not a résumé line, a checklist item, or a search for a perfect answer.
It is an experiment in being present.
Over the next 33 days, I will share the practical side of this journey: distances, route notes, gear lessons, food, accommodations, costs, wrong turns, difficult climbs, and the small decisions that shape a long walk.
But I also want to preserve the things that rarely make it into a packing list or itinerary: the moment a backpack begins to feel lighter, a conversation with a stranger, an unexpected laugh, a cheap meal after a difficult day, or an evening that feels peaceful for no obvious reason.
This is the first page of that practice.
I am not walking to escape my future.
I am walking to stop missing my present.
Trail Notes
- Route: Camino Francés, continuing beyond Santiago to Fisterra and Muxía
- Distance: Approximately 1,000 km / 621 miles
- Duration: 33 days
- Starting point: Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France
- Theme of this journey: Learning to be present—one step, one meal, and one conversation at a time
- Next post: Day 1: Crossing the Pyrenees from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles