Adventures in aging with intention
*** LOVE ***
That feeling that stirs us when least expected. It doesn’t reside on a shelf for safekeeping—it’s limitless, just like us. We simply need to be it to see it, to feel it. This intimate dance that both breaks us open and apart.
I’ll leave the mystical definitions to the poets and musicians who move us. But I do wish to share a perspective that found me on my recent 100-mile trek of the Camino de Santiago, because sharing what’s innate in each of us brings us back home to ourselves. Amazing how it works that way…
With the help of a brilliant novelist and moving at my own pace, I delved deeper into understanding love’s true nature. Identifying it as me, it left an imprint.
My journey started in the most unexpected place—my chiropractor’s office, just days before departure. My back was out, and I hadn’t even attempted to lift my 25-pound backpack. Between adjustments, he told me about Paulo Coelho’s first book “The Pilgrimage” a mystical tale of his own Camino journey. Since Coelho had penned “The Alchemist,” one of my all-time favorites, I raced to get a copy for my essentials.
What is The Camino de Santiago? A centuries-old pilgrimage route leading to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where the remains of the apostle St. James are believed to be buried. While rooted in Christian tradition, people from all cultural and spiritual backgrounds now make this journey, walking hundreds of miles across France, Portugal, or Spain as a personal spiritual awakening—a path of discovery.
Who is Paulo Coelho? His path to becoming one of the world’s most beloved spiritual writers was forged through profound personal struggle and transformation. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947, his unconventional dreams of becoming a writer clashed with his parents’ expectations. When he was a teenager, his father committed him to a mental institution for electroshock therapy to “cure” his non-conformity. These dark experiences, combined with his later involvement in Brazil’s counterculture movement and a brief, terrifying kidnapping and torture by a paramilitary group in 1974, created deep wounds that ultimately became the source of his spiritual seeking. His inspiration for his first major work came in 1986 when he walked the ancient Camino Trail through France. “The Pilgrimage,” published a year later, chronicles his transformative journey and became the foundation for his literary career, though it was “The Alchemist” that launched him to international fame. (Kobe Bryant’s favorite book, by the way.)
As I carried Coelho’s words across those ancient stones, step by step, something profound began to unfold. The author’s insights about love—not just romantic love, but the deeper currents that move through our lives—started resonating with my own experience of the trail. Coelho’s masterful use of metaphors in the lessons he learned offered up an awareness that love, in its truest form, reveals itself in three distinct yet interconnected ways.
Each carries its own power, its own lessons, and its own capacity to transform us along the way.
Trekking nine days with my daughter was a precious gift we unwrapped together. Her loving presence opened me up to a deeper love that went beyond mother and daughter. We were friends, chosen companions, cheering on one another through the tough parts, celebrating our personal bests. I felt carried along with Philia’s flow. We showed up as ourselves, loving each moment and each other, appreciating the wonders that unfolded. It was a powerful force.
The force of Eros arrived the morning we embarked on our journey. For weeks I’d been checking my weather app, fearing the prospect of being cold and miserable. We awoke to a thunderstorm, so we layered up. We could hardly see as we headed to the dock to catch a boat to our starting point—it was as if the wind swept rain was coming at us sideways, not from above. As a California native I’d never felt anything quite like it, but it got me laughing, I felt so alive! Turns out the torrential waters were too dangerous for the boat to operate, so we found a ride over the bridge to begin our quest in A Guarda, Spain. As soon as we found the first seashell marker identifying the trail, the skies magically opened, and sunshine burst through. Moving along the coastline, waves crashing and ocean air kissing our faces, I was struck by the enormity and the simplicity of this journey. By the time we secured our room for the night miles later, it started hailing. Everything I’d feared happened and only added wonder to our adventure. I saw what a waste of worry I’d created when faced with the unknown. I couldn’t wait to call my husband back home, my Eros. I was totally spent, yet vibrating with such excitement it was a while until I fell asleep.
This type of love wove itself into the fabric of my story on the third day, the most challenging at 16.6 miles and various elevations. After a mid-day coffee boost to quell our exhaustion, we entered a magical forest unlike anything I’d ever seen. Beams of light were bursting through a canopy of ancient trees as we navigated along the path covered by huge rocks and deep ditches, arriving at a waterfall wrapped in ferns. Nature was so incredibly alive we could feel its vitality. And when I turned to look at my daughter we connected in deep appreciation of this privilege—to be one with something so sacred and precious. There was so much love, it leaked out in happy tears for me.
My takeaway
You don’t have to walk 100 miles or carry Paulo Coelho’s words across ancient stones to discover these three faces of love. They live in your Monday morning coffee with a friend (Philia), in the moment your heart skips when you see someone special (Eros), in the forgiveness you offer a stranger who cuts you off in traffic (Agape). The Camino didn’t give me love—it simply stripped away everything else so I could finally see what was already there. It’s elemental within us. Coelho was right: we don’t seek love to find it somewhere else. We seek it to remember it was never lost. It’s not separate from us. It IS us. And when we finally understand this, every step becomes a pilgrimage, every day becomes sacred, and every moment becomes an opportunity to love without limits—just like the boundless beings we’ve always been.
“You are what you believe yourself to be.” Paulo Coelho
