Is There Always a Path to Choose?
Yes, but you alone can decide on it.
Everyone experiences at least two “New Years” annually. One is the change of the calendar, December 31 into January 1. The other is your birthday and the change of the year for you and your life.
With the start of a new year, many people set goals and make various plans to a greater or lesser extent for what their life might look like. At the start of the calendar year, there are often resolutions. Go to the gym more, read more, quit smoking, eat less junk food, and so on. Twelve years ago, I realized that resolutions were the equivalent of “try” in Yoda’s “Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.” They have no gravitas, no drive to be acted on.
Thus, all those years ago, I chose to take action for my new year. Instead of blogging randomly, without any set time or schedule, I’d blog once a week, every week, on Wednesday.
The primary purpose of setting a time and doing the thing to blog more regularly was to further spur more frequent and regular writing on my part. After all, writing has been a compulsion of mine since I was 9 years old.
This is the path I’ve seen for my life over most of my life. Storytelling, especially as a writer, is the gift I desire to share with the world.
So, at the start of 2012, I began a blog that would be maintained weekly. Would that get me to start on the path I desired to be on to become a fully realized writer?
I think 628 weeks of consecutive, weekly blog writing – and counting – is indeed a hell of a start.
The snowball effect
In time, I found myself writing 2 blog articles a week. Soon, it became 6. Additionally, I began to put a lot more time and energy into writing fiction, and since 2014, as of this writing, I’ve self-published 9 sci-if, 3 fantasy, and 1 Steampunk novels. Currently, I write 4 blog articles a week, at least 1500 words of fiction a day, and am editing multiple finished works, too.
I believe that this large amount of writing – that began with one New Year’s Action to write a blog article once a week, every week – worked. It snowballed until I did, indeed, find myself on the path I desired to choose for my life.
Everything enormous in the world today started small. One tiny idea evolved into something massive. One person had a notion. That notion led to another idea, which in turn led to another idea, and before long the snowball effect turned an idea into a mobile phone, electricity powering our homes, satellites in orbit, and all else that makes today’s world what it is.
Yet to get from there to here, there was always more than one path. Take the example of electricity. Thomas Edison was a proponent of direct current, or DC. Nikola Tesla was a proponent of alternating current, or AC. To power today’s world, there were two paths, Edison’s and Tesla’s. Without getting into the details or the why, it was Tesla’s AC that got employed, and that’s the world as we know it today.
Both paths would have led to an electrically powered world. Each represents more than one path that might have gotten us here.
A path to choose might be large or small
Another reason why there’s always a path to choose is because of the nature of paths. Some are limited, specific, and relatively small. Others are more limitless, general, and relatively large.
Let’s look at some relatively small paths. For example, earning a degree. That path is relatively small, in that it’s specific in how it’s applied, what the end will be, and the amount of variation on that path is limited. Growing a perfect rose is an equally small path, as there are only so many ways to combine soil, water, nutrients, and light in the limited time it takes for the seed to become a flower.
What about large paths? Let’s take my path, becoming a full-time writer. To get here, I chose to include blogging, taking various jobs involving writing, self-publishing, and the like. However, there are numerous other paths I could have chosen. Traditional publishing, submitting articles to various magazines, a degree in journalism, and lots more. Starting a family is an equally large path, as there are tons of variations for what a family is, how you can build it, and so on.
Large or small, long- or short-term, there are always paths to choose. Arguably, not choosing a path and letting life live you is also a chosen path.
Seeing, recognizing, and choosing a path is all well and good, but there’s another hugely important step involved. Taking a step. Doing “this, that, the other thing, or whatever” to start traversing a given path.
You cannot make a path to choose without action
I can talk about choosing this path or that path until you’re beyond sick of me talking about it. It won’t matter if I don’t act on my choice and start walking said path.
What this looks like varies from person to person and path to path. However, certain factors are always the same.
Specifically, you can’t choose to act on a path without conscious awareness of it. That’s only achievable in the here and now. Then, to make any choice or decision for how to traverse a path, you need to practice mindfulness.
This is how you take control of your life experience and open the way to act on doing whatever it is you desire to do. No matter what the path is, walking it always begins with thought, feeling, and intention.
The one and only exception to this is unintentionally finding your path. Maybe you didn’t initially seek to take that path, so mindfulness wasn’t involved. However, to remain on that path and continue to traverse it, mindful choices and decisions are necessary.
To practice active mindfulness, all you need to do is ask, here and now, questions of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions, such as,
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What is the intent these create within me?
Once asked and answered, here and now, you gain clarity. With that clarity, you can see what actions will get you onto the path you choose, whether it’s a big path or a small path.
What about not choosing a path?
Actively choosing a path for your life, big or small, long-term, short-term, and everything in between, is an act of empowerment. Unfortunately, due to the nature of our fear-based society, finding empowerment is all too often discouraged in various ways.
The most insidious example is what “they” tell us is “normal.” For example, in American culture, this often looks like working 9-5, living in a house you own, having a spouse and a child or two, following your local sports teams, and pursuing life, liberty, and happiness. All other options and paths are to be viewed as suspect and approached with caution.
Accepting the “normal” as your reality does involve occasional choices of paths. However, for the most part, they’re finite, limited, and feed the machine rather than your soul.
Perhaps this looks harsh and judgmental to some. Maybe it is, but I know too many people who fight depression, anxiety, and imbalance because they haven’t chosen life paths.
That’s the kind of path my Pathwalking philosophy is all about. A path to choose is about something that empowers you, gives you control over your life experience, and makes you feel alive and in charge rather than asleep and someone else’s pawn.
There is always a path to choose when you’re working to live life on your terms, making active, consciously aware choices and decisions, and taking the empowerment that’s rightfully yours. Maybe that makes you “woke” in the falsely derogatory sense of the word. However, I know I prefer to be awake and striving to take control of my life over being asleep and letting some other asshole do the driving.
There is always a path to choose. Will you decide to choose it?
This is the six-hundred and twenty-eighth (628) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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