In a leap that transported me 10,000 kilometers and 1,000 years forward, I am now back to the super comfortable lifestyle of my sunny Singapore and to the usual chores and challenges of the professional life.

This is certainly true for my physical body. But the mind is still far behind. I find myself staring at the ceiling during my jetlagged sleepless nights, revisiting mentally my trip step by step, stage by stage, face by face, still wondering about what really happened and how it will affect my future from now on.

I have over a thousand pictures to sort out by subject, date, reference before I miss out the important detail that prompted me to take the picture in the first place. I am concentrated in deconstructing the bidimensional and static images in an attempt to add the background sounds, the smells, the color of my mood and overall feelings of these life fragments before becoming just agglomerates of stolen bits and pixels.

I have dozens of emails of people I shared with essential moments of happiness, joy, wonders and discoveries, and also of pain, disappointment, perhaps also of little despair and recovery. These people, once my daily companions of a common project, now are just like me, back to the ‘normal’ occupations in their tespective countries, and it is hard to picture them literally out of their abused walking shoes and outfits. I hope to keep an occasional contact with all these people, to remember how we were and how we could likely be again if we just want to.

Was it worth? No single answer is possible to this question. Most of the time, people from my ‘normal’ circle of friends, colleagues, or just simple acquaintances, set a critical eye on me to spot the big differences ‘before and after’. Most comments only limit the consideration that, yes, I have lost some weight but not as much as they expected.

I know that the answer lies at a much deeper level. In the day to day journey on our inner Camino, the small changes which we are able to commit consistently are the ones that will generate the bigger differences in the longer term. I can sense these small changes happening shapelessly inside me. I am monitoring any new spontaneous approach in response to the life stresses and the small rewards I am collecting from an increased awareness and open attitude towards others and how I relate to them.

But what about the idea that the whole purpose if my trip was designed by the Lord to touch and affect others? In my two-way conception of the deterministic world, there is always the prejudice of being the sole recipient of the effect of my actions. Both good and bad. But what about if instead I was just an instrument to create an opportunity for others to reap a much more needed benefit?

I would probably never know a certain answer to this last question, but I am now more considerate in feeding just my ego and believing I am the key actor for my own wellbeing. In reciprocity, I am now more conscious that the decisions and effort of others will have likely a much deeper impact on me, once I will keep an open mind to allow myself to resonate at the same frequency of the universe.