Updated by: July 31, 2026
The Company of Yourself
Some days on the Camino I walked 35 kilometers, almost 22 miles, and saw no one. Not a farmer, not another pilgrim, not a car. Just the path, the heat, and whatever was going on in my head.
There’s nowhere to put that. No phone reception worth mentioning, no conversation to fall back on, no one to perform for. Just you, for hours, with your own thoughts running on a loop you didn’t choose and can’t turn off.
It sounds peaceful until you’re actually in it. Because eventually the thoughts run out of anything new to say, and what’s left is just you, un-distracted, for as long as the road lasts. Some days that was fine. Some days it wasn’t. Either way, there was no shortcut out of it. You just kept walking until the day ended and the thoughts, or you, settled down.
I think that’s the real lesson of long solitary walking. Not the scenery, not the fitness, not even the sense of accomplishment at the end. It’s that you find out, plainly and without distraction, whether you actually like the person you’re stuck with. If you don’t, 22 miles alone with him is a long, uncomfortable day. If you do, it’s something closer to company.
I visited my Nonna today. She’s 97, and a few months ago she went into a nursing home. Her room is thick with Catholic paraphernalia, rosaries, a crucifix, small, framed saints. She talks to me in Italian, still, every visit, even though she’s known for years that I don’t understand most of it. She doesn’t switch to English for my benefit. She just talks, and I sit there catching maybe one word in ten, nodding at the shape of the sentence rather than the meaning.
I used to think that not understanding her meant I was missing the conversation. Now I think the conversation was never really the point. She’s not performing comprehension for me, and I’m not performing it back. She’s just saying what she has to say, to whoever happens to be sitting there.
I walked into solitude that day on the Camino and had to find out fast whether I could sit with myself, no distraction, no one to perform for. My nonna has had 97 years of practice at exactly that, and she’s still doing it, out loud, in a language half the room can’t follow.
Maybe that’s what 22 miles alone taught me to notice in her. Not that solitude is something you arrive at once and get over. It’s something you keep doing, in whatever room life puts you in, for as long as you’re asked to.
Paul Mercuri
Wake Up Here Founder
