Pathwalking 163
Whose path is it anyway?
It never ceases to amaze me how many people try to tell us what is right for us. How many people will tell you that their way is the way, and yours is not. It can be terribly disconcerting, and disheartening.
Believe me when I tell you that nobody but you can choose the right path for you.
There are numerous forces in the world that would far prefer you disempowered, and taking the path that they make for you.
Some of these forces are abstract, and harder to pin down. This includes society as a whole, the local community you live in, your nation, your religious organization, your employers, so on and so forth. It is better for those who believe they have power to horde it, and deny you anything that they can which might empower you. Or so they believe.
Some of these forces are personal. Friends, family, loved ones. People who “know best” or are “only looking out for your best interests” and so on. Generally, these forces are less about disempowering you to horde their own power, and more about how they relate to you personally, and their understanding of you as such. They believe that they see something that you do not or that they are helping when they take such actions, so it is usually coming from a good place.
However, whether abstract or personal, those who are working to disempower you make things difficult. Well meaning or malicious, when people deny you the empowerment you want from life, it can be very hard to know if you are on a good path or no.
The important thing here is to find and choose your own path. Whether people respect it or not is not important. What is important is that you are doing what you want to be doing, and that what you are doing brings you joy and makes you happy.
Time and again I have reiterated that what we all really want in this life is to find happiness. We want to experience joy, and we want to be happy in what we are doing. However, we get so caught up in expectations and perceived needs that before we know it we are either upon no path at all, or a path that we did not choose for ourselves.
The things we seek upon our path, from relationships to jobs to money to respect are all sought for the same reason. It all boils down to discovering things that make us happy, that make us feel joy. I don’t know anyone who does not want to be happy. Even if it cannot be all the time – and it cannot be – it can still be the dominant and driving desire of our lives.
Disempowering things manifest in a lot of ways. It is the government telling you what you can and cannot do with your body. It is your coworker throwing you under the bus. It is your loved one telling you that the way you are doing a thing is going to cause hurt and unhappiness in others.
That is the greatest disempowering thing you can face. When someone tells you what you are doing will hurt another or cause them displeasure really pulls you up short. Whether it is an abstract like society not seeing validity in your employment or relationship choices, or a loved one disagreeing with your wedding plans…these can equally disempower, and they can make even the most ardent Pathwalker question their actions.
The thing about empowering yourself is that anyone who is feeling hurt by your actions is not being hurt by you. As I am responsible for MY feelings, you are responsible for YOUR feelings, he is responsible for HIS feelings, she is responsible for HER feelings…and so on. Empowerment is not selfishness.
That is a key thing to remember. Empowering yourself is not about becoming selfish…it is about becoming self aware. In fact, when you are feeling empowered, it generally follows that you in turn empower others. It is for this reason that I choose to walk my own path, and I write about the concept every single week.
I want to empower myself, and I hope that in doing so I help to empower you. But your path is not mine, just as your path is not anyone’s but yours. Walk tall, walk proud, and continue to work on learning and evolving and finding the paths that will lead your life to happiness.
Life is meant to be lived passionately, joyfully, and as fully as we can possibly live it. The best path to achieve that kind of life is through your own empowerment, and your own growth and evolution. No one but you can take responsibility for that.
This is something to be celebrated, to be shared, and to be constantly worked on. Whose path is it anyway? It is mine. But my path, while different from yours or anyone else’s, is in part to share the idea of self empowerment and what possibilities it can open.
Do you empower yourself?
This is the one-hundred sixty-third entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my personal desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Feel free to re-blog and share. Thank you for joining me.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available in print and for your Kindle.
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