Growing up, Sunday afternoons meant walks.
We followed many paths, many different paths on many different Sunday afternoons over the years.
With enough regularity to make it memorable my father would veer off into the undergrowth at seemingly random points on the walk, weaving through bushes and brambles, crossing rivers balancing like tightrope walkers on the fallen trunks of tree, or cutting a path of his own when things got tangled. All the time, respectfully aware that everywhere is somethings home.
Everywhere is Somethings Home.
He would hand over the lead.
Trusting yourself to find the path through life that is right for you can be a bit of an illusion. The key is, I found at such times, was just to walk, More than that, to be where you are when you are there. In the woods, feeling lost quickly stopped being a thing. Spaces would open up. The clearest route would always make itself known, even if that was to turn around and retrace your steps. It’s never as much fun to go back, but sometimes, seeing the path in reverse will reveal things that you didn’t see going in the other direction.
The forest was often like a bit like an open maze, or a puzzle to be solved.
Learning to pay attention to the pace and the landscape came to make a difference, before any potential detours. This was not so much an anticipation but rather, and appreciation of topography. Where were the ups and the downs. What way were the rivers flowing.
Of course, we were never that far from a road or another path. Stumbling upon an established path, it was easy to appreciate that you didn’t have to think in the same way. You could jut follow. The decisions were simpler. Left or right. In the forest, everywhere was an option. At least sometimes.
The Path that Shows Itself
Whether he knew this was what I was doing or not I cannot say for sure, only that over time these detours took us further and deeper into the forest, until the path he had woven was so complex that it may as well have been a maze that we were in – because that is what it often become. At such times, as mentioned above, the path that was the most clear was the one that seemed most obvious to take. And sometimes you had to go backwards to go forwards, or far to the left, or far to the right. The point was, that in terms of reaching a destination, finding your path through the forest was never straight forward. But once you stopped trying to get to the destination, paths would show themselves, and trusting that they were taking you somewhere was the experience, because we got to places that if felt like no other people got to see, and some of those places were extraordinary.
How different is life?
The better you come to know the variables, the qualities of the environments through which your paths lead, the better resourced you will be to make choices that lead you along them better.
The better you come to know the variables, the qualities of the environments through which your path leads, the better able you will be to relax in them; to handle them, and more than this, to appreciate where you are at while you are there.
If you live at the edge of experience in this way, where the envelope of comfort bridges into adventure, then you may well find that you grow, sometimes without even realising it, because that envelope consistently expands. If you live safe at the core, then maybe less so.
The choice is always yours.
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