Böcker i Camino de la Luna-serien

What is compassion? Something alive perhaps, that can only be understood in practice. So often confused with pity or the self-sacrificing impulse to take on another's burden, to make things better, to fix. It takes strength and delicacy and it doesn't mean giving away your life savings.Self compassion is sometimes the place between pushing through and giving up, the moment we can recognize our true needs, not our desires even if they're for further suffering. Sometimes the moment we find self compassion is the moment we stop and walk away. I had found forgiveness in Switzerland and now I was heading to friends in Rome before taking the leap to South East Asia, to Sri Lanka, to a new understanding of compassion and self compassion.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." So said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1933 Inaugural Address when he first became US President. It was a year when almost 1 in 3 were unemployed in the US, a year when a Jewish pacifist called Albert Einstein left Germany to work at Princeton, a year when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and opened Dachau, the first concentration camp.The money changers, as Roosevelt called them, had created a Great Depression. "Happiness" he said "lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort." Having left Sri Lanka, I was about to explore Malaysia, Borneo, Bangkok and ultimately visit the almost mythical Kingdom of Bhutan, reported to be the Happiest Place on Earth. I was about to confront my own deepest fear.

In June 2016 I decided to sell my house of 22 years and leave my comfort zone. Slowly the Camino de Santiago showed itself and I decided, with no rucksack or hiking experience to start... But that's another story, the one that led to this one.My Camino in Spain taught me to let go of everything I didn't need, to travel light and wash my clothes in the shower, but most importantly it taught me to trust my heart and my feet, to let my journey unfold naturally, instinctively, intuitively.In the words of the theme song from my favourite TV show, "Nobody knows where they might end up" when they follow their heart.Riding high on reaching the true destination of my Camino I raced to the airport to leave a country I had fallen in love with but which I'd had enough of (for the moment). There were two flights out that night; Seattle or Vancouver.Which country would I end up in next?My heart was calling me to Seattle, the Emerald City, the home of my TV family, but it all depended on my cab driver and how fast I could run with a loaded rucksack.

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winning physicistThe moment I felt my real feelings, back in a Native American healing in 2016, I discovered what a great liar I was. Lonely, depressed, desperate… the lowest of the low… No matter how my life looked to anyone else the only thing that mattered was being real with myself.But I was still lying, so poetically, so romantically, tricking myself, that my lies grew even more dangerous. Luckily life protected me from myself, from acting on what I thought was real. Instead I got on a plane to Spain and started hiking, each step bringing me closer to the truth, which I would finally understand on the other side of the world.

What divides us?What sets us against each other?What stops us from being able to come home to our true selves?I had found truth in Thailand, discovered another wall inside me and freed another part of my soul.There were things to be done, journeys to be taken, strangers to meet, mistakes and regrets to put right and only some of them were mine. But my mistakes alone were enough to change everything.I had started in Spain, this Camino de la Luna, though it started long before and will not end until I die, but where next? Would I finally cross the equator to the Southern Hemisphere, to Africa and could I ever heal the new wounds in my relationships, could I find reconciliation, or as they call it in South Africa, Ubuntu? Would I ever find peace... Would I ever put down my rucksack?