Dear Reader,

Early on my first Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgrimage across northern Spain that people have walked for over a thousand years, I was climbing one of the steepest hills on the route when a man passed me. He was clearly much older than I was, and he was walking faster. I could hardly believe it.

A few kilometers up the road, I found him sitting by the side of the path with a cold beer. I sat down next to him and we started to talk. He was 84 years old, from Mexico, a mechanic by trade, and had walked the Camino at least a dozen times. The reason he had stopped was his son, who was still a few kilometers behind.

THIS WEEK'S REFLECTION

You Are as Young as You Feel In Your Heart

When I asked the old man why he kept walking the Camino after so many times, he said it was his way of keeping himself young and strong. People his age, he told me, are expected to settle into a nursing home and become the little grandpa everyone feels sorry for, and he refused to conform to that. Then, in the language of a mechanic, he said something I have never forgotten.

People are like cars, he told me. The body gets banged up from the years on the road, but if you keep the engine well oiled and maintained, the vehicle can last a very long time and climb the steepest hills. A car can also look beautiful on the outside while the engine underneath has been neglected and is out of sync. What matters is not the age of the body but the age of the heart. The heart is the engine, and if you keep it strong and youthful, the rest will follow.

I believe he was pointing to a deeper truth. Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, you are only as young or as old as you feel in your heart. We all know people in their seventies who say they feel nineteen, and we know people who are nineteen and feel eighty-five. The number on your birth certificate tells you how long you have been here, but it says very little about how alive you are.

Many of us were taught what our age is supposed to allow, and we quietly obey. We stop dancing, singing, and saying yes to the things that once lit us up, because someone decided a person our age should not. Your heart can return to its natural youthfulness whenever you give it permission.

THIS WEEK'S PRACTICE

GO DEEPER

How Walking the Camino de Santiago Changed the Direction of My Life

That conversation on the hill was just one small moment on a road that changed my life. I walked my first Camino knowing almost nothing about it, and it led me past Santiago to Madeira, to Fátima, and finally to Granada, the city I now call home.

If you'd like to go deeper on how going on a pilgrimage can transform your life, check out my latest article. In it, I tell the whole story, including the lonely first half, the turning point, the friends I made along the way, and what I learned when I got sick on my second Camino.

FINAL THOUGHTS

A Heart Open To Life

I have thought about that scene many times. If I had never walked the Camino de Santiago, I would never have inspired others to walk it with me. The man on that hill showed me how one person’s way of living can awaken something in another.

Spiritual wisdom has long pointed us back to the heart as the wellspring of life. When we tend it, we stay connected to our own source of inner joy and to the treasures that give life meaning.

To keep a youthful heart is to remain childlike in the best sense: open to wonder, ready to be amazed, and still willing to say yes to life. I hope this story inspires you to keep cultivating that kind of heart.

From my heart to yours, Gabriel Gonsalves