THE WAY TO SANTIAGO

Many are the routes that lead to the Way of Santiago de Compostela, leaving from different points of France, of Portugal or of Spain itself. The way that I've chosen, leaving from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, at the bottom of the Pyrenees from the French side, is only one of the options. It's full of symbolisms, because of its meaning to Europe History, the old constructions and the many reports left by pilgrims along the centuries. The oldest of them is the Codex Calixtinus, written in 1130 by Aymeric Picaud.

I've marched more than 850 km in five weeks, in such experience that made me test my own limits and rethink about my life.

Almost one year before the departure to Spain, I put my ideas on a piece of paper, I discussed with some friends and got many tips from them. I wanted to spread my ideas for the largest number of people that I could, mainly for those afflicted about their courses in life, those who consider the lack of time or money as being obstacles you can't get over. I wanted to show the possibility of working 70 hours a week and even getting time for yourself. And I went in search of sponsorship to create a self-supported project, without earning money. For my surprise, I got the support of big enterprises, people and institutions, such as DBM, Santander Bank, Eldorado Radio Station, Jornal da Tarde Newspaper, Iridium-Motorola, Iberia, Antonio Nieto (tourism consul of Spain), Mandic (previous name of Osite/Elsitio) and ADD -- Associação dos Desportistas Deficientes (handicapped sportspeople association).

I managed to create the yield for the project to be self-supported and, even more, I took the advantage to donate the excess to O Pequeno Cotolengo, an institution located in Cotia, a town in São Paulo state, which shelters children and adolescents with locomotion problems. The ADD, just like the AACD: (another charitable institution), received free divulgation from my speeches on the radio and on the printed midia. The project included publishing texts on O Estado de São Paulo newspaper, giving touristic information on Jornal da Tarde newspaper and giving little speeches on the programmation of Eldorado Radio Station.

The radio station was an extremely important channel, because it allowed me to speak in real time to thousands of people stuck in the traffic jam or the rush of the big cities. I registered 111 speeches during my walk. Many of them went on air on the whole, others were edited. These recordings registered the moment I was living, with pieces of information, comments and lots of emotion.

I lived, in another context, a career development. I started as a trainee pilgrim, a beginner full of doubts and perplexities. Afterwards, I became a junior pilgrim, already with some knowledge, and after that a senior one. Almost arriving there, I was a master pilgrim, who understands the thought of the body and knows how to use the competence of the others in his own aid and vice-versa. He knows how to exchange, give, receive, share, teach and learn.

During the Way you have the opportunity to live different things. I particularly enjoyed the new friends, the leisure, the pleasure, the relaxing, the nothing. Very quickly it's noticed that the mind is the biggest factor to be managed. Once the physical condition is adjusted and the initial anxiety and euphoria are overcome, the pilgrim, at a certain moment, faces for days and days running a landscape formed by wheat fields in 360 degrees. Therefore, it's impossible to get introspective. And that is when the magic happens. At the wheat fields I revised my life, evaluated my career, reviewed my roles.

I walked, suffered with the heat, with the cold, I slept on the street, I had moments of anguish and, 33 days after, early in one morning, I arrived in Santiago de Compostela cathedral. I was welcomed by a priest whose name was coincidently Santiago, with whom I could discuss about reflections I had done along the Way.

Reaching Santiago wasn't enough. I wanted more. I wanted to reach really the limit. That's why I kept on walking to the west, up to Finisterre. This step, with trekking characteristics, was harder and even more intense. Finisterre, as the name says, is the place where ancient people thought Earth ended. There I watched a magnificient sunset on the Atlantic waters. Seeing the scene inverted (in Brazil we see the sunrise on the ocean), under the emotion of concluding the venture, was an unique experience in my life. I lived again everything that had happened along the Way and I felt that I was breaking with one way of thinking. I started to put focus and energy in those things that really seem important to me: making dreams into projects, fantasies into reality.

Herbert Steinberg