We the pathless
We find ourselves in an insatiable and frustrated hunger for advancement. For a path on which we can diligently cultivate ourselves from white to black belt, from bachelor to professor, from lead to gold. A deep seated human thirst-that societies have been shaped to accommodate, with its myriad ranks degrees and shiny badges. A thirst which is another one of those hidden composing forces of culture found in the unconscious depths of the mass mind. Mayhaps in a faraway world, this force has composed a path for those like us.
…
We the pathless
We whose seeds of potential are not understood by the gardeners of culture. We, the hungry wandering saplings who search for the place where we may grow into our own. We who have fallen between the paths of our society, or as they say between the cracks. We are the wanderers, and there are those of us who wander our whole lives still thirsty for our way.
It is perhaps for this reason that the deepest fear of the wanderer is to lose their way or never to find it. To feel lost, deeper and deeper, until there is no way back…
This is the fear that drives us to keep wandering, always tracking the next scent of promise, no matter how faint. This is also the fear that drives us to despair when we lose the scent, when our compass starts spinning wild and we feel the guttural tremble of impending doom.
When this happens, we glare down upon the abyss, down where the hungry spider of lost souls patiently lurks, waiting for the gravity of aimless despair to drag us into its webs, to become another lost tormented soul. A special hell for us the pathless.
We feel ourselves sinking toward it until our soul’s knee jerk response fires and we catch a new scent of promise, freeing us yet again from the gravity of its abyss.
And so the wanderers game of lost and found goes round.
In our hearts we wonder. Am I wandering in circles or is each round taking me somewhere? Is that somewhere better, or am I in fact slowly spiraling into the abyss? Will I ever find my path?
…
We the pathless
We have a question to answer.
Must we wander out of fear?
Must we live every day bullied into living it?
Or is it within our power to choose another way?
…
We the pathless
We have a choice to make.
To choose the pathless way.
…
We the pathless
We can choose to embrace our misfitted condition.
To embrace it, despite the indignant feeling that there is in truth nothing wrong with us, that we of course don’t deserve to have to claw our way bewildered into our place in this world, and that in a better world, we could indeed have blossomed beautifully into our own, on a path made for those like us.
We can choose to embrace all of this, at least at first, because the alternative is miserable.
So what happens if we stand up tall on the pathless way?
…
We the pathless
If we stand up tall, then we make a friend and an ally of our greatest enemy, the unknown. We recognize that while the unknown can be the greatest weakness of the pathless, it can also become our greatest strength. For if we cannot source our way from the known, there is only one other place to turn.
If we stand up tall, then we understand that all the crowded paths we see today have once been forged. Not by those who fit onto a paved path, but by those like us, the pathless, who found the courage to brave a new path of our own and who opened it up for the world to enjoy. We, the friends of the unknown.
If we stand up tall, then we see that we the pathless are not destined to become the lost souls of history, we can also rise as its next guiding stars. We see that we are not bound to be the aliens of our culture, we may also become the new branches of its identity. We see that we have as natural a role as anybody else in this world, in our world, if we choose to embrace it.
But if we choose to embrace it, then we must befriend our enemy.
We must flip our story on its head.
…
We the pathworkers
We will not be bullied into life by the terrors of the night, we will be drawn by its wonders.
What wonders?
We don’t know.
This is the way of the pathless.
That is the lot of a pathworker.
To brave and chart the misty mountains of the unknown.
…
May I one day see you up among the stars,
Lighting a new way.
…
Happy Trails,
Sagi