I have been thinking about a meadow that I used to live next to.
It felt vast, filled with long grasses that overgrew one another. Through it ran countless paths, narrow, uneven, winding this way and that, cris-crossing one another.
❖
Where did these pathways come from? No one built them. Yet they did not arise from nothing. They were pressed into being by the countless feet that came before: neighbors, wanderers, deer, children. Each following their own logic.
Sometimes I imagine a horde crossing the field at once. Some heading left, some right, some stopping to look at the sky. Each toward their own destination, unique, and yet all moving across the same broad meadow -- and overall going the same way: from here to there.
❖
What makes one turn left while another turns right? Habit? Impulse?
What makes me, master of myself, choose one trail over another—or step into the tall grass and begin a new one altogether?
An unseen hand?
We are all different, and we are all the same.
❖
Had I tried to lay out these paths in advance, it would have been all squares and rectangles, straight lines and complex intersections. It all would have collapsed under its own weight.
But instead, in spite of me, the centuries of accumulated organic wisdom have created these trails, through this meadow.
Maybe that is how the best paths come to be: not drawn, but worn.
From here, to there.
– from the mountain
Consider:
What path shall I make today? Or shall I follow another’s?
Reading:
“Traveler, there is no path; the path is made by walking.” — Antonio Machado, “Proverbios y Cantares XXIX” (1912)
❖
“The path is not in the sky; the path is in the heart.” — Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada, verse 92
❖
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” — Proverbs 3:5–6 (KJV)
Thank you for reading. If this helped you today, consider subscribing or sharing it.