100km Left to Santiago de Compostela
Day 27, Samos to Portomarín
Yay! The “100km left to Santiago” marker! It’s the most decorated camino marker to date because everyone expresses their happiness by defacing it with their sharpies!
Also the 99.930km marker. I felt sorry for it because everyone takes a photo of the famous 100km maker but blows past this one.
Help me out here, but what compels someone from a different country, or at least someone writing in a different language (usually English,) to show their gratitude to the host region and it’s people, by writing pithy new-age jargon on any surface they deem proverb worthy?
This is not street art nor the occasional helpful graffiti which is also found along the way. Its almost a form of proselytizing and it makes me bristle. I’ve seen this tendency in the yoga planet for years: simplistic reductions of the complexity of the planet in an easy to remember phrase. Whoever utters the phrase gets credit for their wisdom. It drives me bonkers.*
See photos below which illustrate my point.
* I have a list somewhere of new-agisms, which by the way, are not yoga and were “imported” into the practice for some odd reason. I have tinkered with the idea of writing an article refuting them and my favorite phrase to take down is “everything happens for a reason,” but I won’t do it here. However, a terrific book that deals with common trying-to-be-helpful-but-are-actually-hurtful phrases in our culture of christian origin is “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” by Harold S Kushner.
©Theresa Elliott, All Rights Reserved
The 100km way marker, and the official beginning of the end of the Camino de Santiago.
The next way marker, the mostly ignored and less celebrated 99,930 marker.
Arrow way marker, stressing I Do it With Love!
Street Art, for comparison.
So not helpful.
Okay, good to know there is an unofficial latrine off to the side of the road.
The owners of the restaurant this graffiti is aimed at may disagree with how helpful or not it is.
The change I want to see in the world involves less preachy graffiti.
Okay, really? What did the pot do to you?