You're Doing It Wrong

and other unhelpful tips for the journey you're on

In 2019 I walked the Camino de Santiago with a couple friends. We walked the Camino Frances route starting in St. Jean Pied de Port in France, crossing the Pyrenees and traveling west from east across Spain for about 500 miles until we reached the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. At the end of our first day of walking, as we arrived at the pilgrim’s hostel in Roncesvalles, Spain, I learned an important lesson. It was a lesson taught over and over by other pilgrims during our first week. There will always be someone to tell you that you’re doing your pilgrimage wrong.

Pilgrimage is an archetype, a myth, a thing that is always larger on the inside than it is on the outside. It captures hearts and imaginations, it is pregnant with stories, and for those who go, to borrow from Hemingway, it is a moveable feast. People go on pilgrimage for any number of reasons and this is especially true of the Camino. I met pilgrims who were on the Camino as a part of their “gap year” plan. Some pilgrims who literally landed there with no luggage, no gear but a well-endowed credit card, on a search to discover themselves. Some pilgrims were on a religious pilgrimage and full of faith, others were starting a season of life in which they had questions but few answers. Not a few pilgrims had no idea why they were there or what they expected from their walk. Some wanted to take as long as possible, others were running or biking to see how fast they could get it “done.”

But at the end of our first day of hiking over the Pyrenees mountains, we were warned by a group of university age pilgrims standing outside the hostel that we should keep moving, there were no beds left for that night. Without realizing what was about to happen, I mentioned to one young man that we had made reservations for beds just that morning at our overnight host’s insistence. The small crowed turned ugly quickly and started “evaluating” our standing as “real” pilgrims. They mocked us for our reservations and insisted we were not “real” pilgrims. The same kind of encounter occurred the next afternoon as we walked into the small town of Zubiri for accommodations our host in St. Jean had insisted on making for us. “After Zubiri” he told us, “you should be fine.”

There will always be someone to tell you that you’re doing your pilgrimage wrong.

There will always be someone to tell you that you’re doing your life wrong.

Your marriage wrong.

Raising your kids wrong.

Eating wrong. Exercising wrong. Sleeping wrong. Dreaming wrong. Working wrong. Spending money wrong. Drinking wrong. Playing wrong. Painting wrong. Following Jesus wrong. Being an atheist wrong. Being a pastor wrong. Doing therapy wrong. Writing wrong. Retiring wrong. Dying wrong.

I’ve been on a pilgrimage of following Jesus for about 40 years now. At each stage along the way I have tried to live up to my best understanding of what it looks like to follow. Between you and me, what that means has changed a lot over all these years. Like my marriage, I only had a vague idea what I was saying, “yes” to all those years ago. And, like my marriage, what it looks like today, three children and six grandchildren later, spread far about from one another, having my parents and now just my mom living with us and looking after her, and approaching my own “retirement,” it’s nothing like I expected it to be.

And all along the way there have always been fellow pilgrims to tell me that I’m not doing it right.

As my friends and I were walking into Pamplona on the Camino, we were relying on a map. We felt we understood the map well enough to turn aside from the little yellow arrows pointing the way on the Camino and “choose our own adventure” to get to our hostel for the night. A short cut of our own making. Less than 100 feet from where we diverged from the Camino path, kind, warm, caring Spaniards were gently trying to explain to us in Spanish, recognizing us as pilgrims, that we were going the wrong way. We gently tried to explain in English that we understood, we appreciated their help but we wanted to go the direction we were going. They would shake their heads and try to explain to us again. And again. Finally they would give up, shaking their heads, saying a little prayer for “El Peregrino Loco.”

Not everyone who tells you that you’re doing it wrong, that you aren’t doing it right, is against you. Often, they are very much for you. They just think they know better.

And sometimes, maybe even often, they do.

We like to play the “catcher in the rye” and keep people from plunging over an edge into uncertainty. But it turns out that life is often about that which lies on the other side of certainty, even over the edge of a cliff we want to protect people from going over.

I won’t lie. I’ve gone over a bunch of cliffs. And metaphorically and literally, I have gone the wrong way on several occasions. What I’ve found, however, in getting lost both literally and metaphorically is that in doing so, something beautiful has often been gained. Doing it “wrong” has often led to some of the best and most important moments of my life.

Let me give you an example.

Late in life I went to St. Stephen’s University to get a Master’s. The “right” way would probably have been to go from under-grad right into graduate school. For a whole bunch of reasons, I didn’t do it that way. I had opportunities to go to St. Stephen’s before I finally did. And while it’s another story for another time, looking back I can see that going there when I did and not going there or somewhere else before then, has everything to do with who I am today – including my walking the Camino de Santiago.

It’s no overstatement to say that going to SSU when I did was life changing and life saving for me.

My wife, the Elusive, and I were walking and talking the other night and she made the simple and very true observation that if I had gone off to graduate school when I originally planned to (right after undergrad) I would have turned into a far bigger jerk than I am today and there’s a very good chance that our marriage never would have survived what that step of education would have led to at that particular time. Doing it right would have been so wrong.

On my last night on the Camino there were four of us sleeping in a four person room. One of our roommates came in after I went to sleep and was gone before I woke up. I had seen our other roommate along the way several times, including a pilgrim’s mass at which he was one of the readers. We got to listen to him tell us his story and the series of “doing it wrong” choices that culminated in us sharing a room together a short walk from Santiago. He told us about his great expectation of finishing the walk the next morning. His plan was to get up early, well before us, so that he would be the very first pilgrim in line at the pilgrim’s credential office.

He wasn’t, but he was close, much closer than we were when we arrived. But when we talked to him on our way to get the final stamp on our own credentials, having just received his final stamp and his Compostela certificate, he had tears in his eyes and a joy that radiated from him that was transcendental. Standing in the early morning darkness in a city I had just arrived at, embracing someone who I had only just met, hugging out my non-hugger heart, I knew I was in a holy moment. All the wrong ways taken and all the wrong ways of being a pilgrim had somehow managed to land me in the middle of some of the most sacred spaces I have ever stepped into.

There will always be someone to tell you that you’re doing your life wrong. Don’t live to do your life right. That can keep you from some of those spectacular adventures, sacred moments and unexpected discoveries along the way. Be a pilgrim, if you can, be curious and let someone else be the one to be judgmental about the way someone else is doing their pilgrimage. There’s more life walking with people than telling people walking by that they’re doing it wrong.

I can’t wait to get back to the Camino so I can do it wrong again.