Step by Step How to Realize Your Dream

“Come, even if you have broken your vow one thousand times, come, yet again, come, come.” ~Rumi

I read these words on a plaque in the middle of climbing a small mountain, in the middle of northern Spain, in the middle of a hot summer, at the end of my thirty-third year.

My eyes filled with tears and even as I brushed them away, adjusted my pack, and continued climbing up the mountain, the words echoed in my mind

I was walking the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route that runs across the north of Spain. I’d started my walk three weeks ago in St Jean Pied de Port, a small French village in the Pyrenees.

That first day I climbed through the mountains and crossed into Spain, and from there I walked through all kinds of terrain: rolling hills, wide open spaces, tracks through forests, rocky paths winding through vineyards.

The total route would take me thirty-one days and my final destination was Santiago de Compostela, a city in the northwest corner of Spain, where legend has it that the remains of St James the Apostle were buried in a crypt beneath the cathedral.

People had been making this pilgrimage for centuries, and now I was one more of the hundreds of thousands — millions — to make the journey.

I’d chosen to walk this pilgrimage for so many reasons, reasons that I couldn’t even fully understand. On my first night in France, before even stepping foot on the Camino, a Frenchman…