Pathwalking 124
Sometimes you find you are traveling upon more than one path.
I have stated multiple times that there are many paths to choose. There is always an option, or a number of options before you in any given situation.
While it is certainly easier if you can choose just one single path, often it is difficult to do so.
What’s more, given our nature and diversity of personality, it is also difficult for any single path you have chosen to give you full satisfaction with your life.
What does that mean? We all have an appetite to fulfill certain needs, wants, and desires. There are three key elements, no matter what the need is. Tangible or intangible, want or need, everything of this nature be identified as spiritual, emotional, or physical.
More than once I have pointed out the division of mind/body/spirit, and in so doing called attention to both differences and similarities. Each of these can be further seen from the viewpoint of the emotional/physical/spiritual. Some things will stimulate each of these individually, some will cut across them all, while some will be any given combination of these adjectives.
As such, while one path may lead you where you wish to go physically, another, different path may take you along the journey you desire emotionally, while yet another may direct you towards spiritual necessities.
Along the way, all three of these may cross, intersect, split apart into vastly different directions, maybe even spin you around. Each of these paths likely will correspond with one another from time to time, and are just as likely to diverge from each other as well.
Difficult enough to choose and follow a single path, but how do you balance following multiple paths? Choice. It all comes down to choosing the path, and following it. In the case of needing to fulfill different needs with different paths, it is important to prioritize. It is also important to recognize that different paths need to be followed at different times, for any number of reasons, logical or otherwise.
Remember that everything in Pathwalking is fluid. Really, I probably should have named this Pathswimming, because the path is far more likely to resemble a river or stream than one of earth and stone. The path itself will be twisted and bent by obstacles it must flow around, under, through and over, not to mention your navigation of it.
But that’s the beauty of Pathwalking. In choosing your own path, you can direct the flow, and how you want it to go. You can carve out new channels for the water to flow into, or dam up the flow to create the pool at the end of the path you have chosen. Even when you have more than one path you are traversing at a time, you can have and take control and make choices.
I am frequently writing about obstacles in the path, bumps, twists, turns, so on and so forth. I have made it clear that you may discover the path you believed in and chose may turn out to no longer be working for you, and thus you have to choose another. In having more than one path to travel at a time, you can readily transfer yourself between them.
Additionally, having more than one path to travel at a time does not mean that you must travel all of them, every day. There is no rule for how long you take to travel on any given path, the key is choosing a path to travel, and then doing it. That might mean you give this path your attention today, and that path your time tomorrow. The measure of time upon a given path is not important, it is finding, acknowledging, and ultimately choosing to travel the path that matters. Minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, or however long, the choice is yours to make.
I see people on the treadmill of life every day. It is not a path, as the treadmill leads you to nowhere. Sure, you are walking along, and you can even be facing a simulation of a real path. But you are going nowhere, and the ground beneath your feet may be moving, but there is no direction, no true journey. That is not control of your life, that is not choice.
I am on more than one path in life. I have more than one goal for myself, and though there is an overarching path upon which I travel, there are other trails to be followed from time to time. Different times will find me along different paths, but no matter which I find myself on, I have chosen to seek them, and traverse them.
When all is said and done, I believe that it is better to have the control and take for myself the choices life offers. I am not a drone, I do not want a life someone else has chosen for me. I am a Pathwalker, and I am proud that even when I appear to be no closer to the goal I am after, I still know there is something to be gained by having chosen this path. I also know that by walking more than one path at a time, it is easy to change gears if one path dead-ends or turns in an unwanted direction.
Pathwalking is not just about the goal at the end of the voyage, it is about the journey itself. There is so much to learn, experience, do and feel. When you choose what path you wish from life, the opportunities to learn along the path are exponentially larger, more intense, and more varied. You can spend time observing the nuances of life along the path, rather than watching your feet or the closing of the distance between you and your goal.
Do you know the paths before you?
This is the one-hundred twenty fourth entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Feel free to re-blog. Thank you for joining me.
The first year of Pathwalking is available in print and for your Kindle.
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