When We’re On Our Life Paths We’re Not Always Walking Alone
Our life paths belong to us alone – but that doesn’t mean we walk them wholly alone.
At the start of 2012, I began Pathwalking. This regular weekly blog would evolve into a whole life philosophy. Through this process, I have been choosing paths for my life experience for the past 11 years.
These have been some of the best years of my life. Many things have changed over this decade-plus – the vast majority of it being for the better.
I have been largely choosing my path, my life experience, and working with the tools that we all have. Mindfulness, self-awareness, conscious reality creation, and making my own choices and decisions for how to live this life.
One of the key elements of this philosophy is that the only person’s path we can ever choose is our own. I can’t make you choose a path and vice versa. We’re on our own, deciding the best course of action for the many elements of our life experiences.
There is a huge amount of freedom that comes from this.
But for the most part – nobody lives in a vacuum. And by that, I mean we interact with other people to a greater or lesser degree.
This is why, though we are on our own, unique, individual, for-us-only paths – we’re not always walking them alone.
Who else is on these paths with us?
Just like the individuality of our given/chosen paths, so too are who might be on them with us.
But the simplest explanation is anyone we share our life with.
In my case – that’s my wife. All choices that I make on this path will impact her for better or worse.
Fortunately, she understands my process, my path, and my choices. That understanding has gone further to include encouragement for the paths I am on.
You might have a spouse, a live-in partner, a roommate, a family member under your care or that you live with. When you choose a path – you are going to be bringing them along.
This can be problematic for a lot of different reasons. And this crosses into a weird nebulous place where the individual is not wholly alone – by choice.
Here’s the thing – only you can know your head, heart, and soul. That’s always true, no matter how close you might be to another. But some types of relationships create a common, shared life that cannot be neglected or ignored.
Communication is the key
That path I am on today is not the path I was on in 2012. At least, not in the way I am traversing it today.
My current path was begun somewhere around 2018. It’s met the usual twists, turns, bumps, and obstacles. For the most part, however, this has been an incredible, amazing experience.
That’s not to say there aren’t some bad days and a lot of different frustrations.
Much as this is my path to walk. But for lots of reasons I’m not going into here, I could not walk it without my wife’s support.
And that comes down to communication.
We talk about everything. She knows what I am doing – and I know what she is doing. She accepts the pitfalls of what I do, and I support all that she does. We’re a partnership – and communication is the key to how I walk this path with her at my side.
Even though she’s not on the same path I am.
Our life paths and the journey
One of the most important factors of the paths I’ve been choosing to walk these last 11 years are about the paths themselves. The journey. The present. Living in the now.
Mindfulness is necessary for conscious awareness. It’s awareness that tells us what we’re thinking, what and how we’re feeling, what actions we’re taking, and the intentions behind them. That opens the door to taking control of where we are and where we go from there.
All of this is a product of the now. Because the only time that’s really real is the now.
Right here and now, though my path is for me alone, my wife walks by my side on this journey. Her support, her love, and her presence empower me further. Even though our paths are not the same – we still share them.
We are each on our individual journeys in this life. But while our end goals are unique, the journey is shared.
Our life paths allow us to take the same journey together, even though where we go is separate. But – that written, the end goals we both have will be reached together and shared.
We recognize and acknowledge this. And together, we have formed a collective consciousness.
Life paths and collective consciousness
The collective consciousnesses in the world tend to become “reality” as we generally identify it.
Hence why we agree that water is wet, the sky is blue, a red light means stop, up is the opposite of down, and the like.
But then it zooms in. Various individual collectives come together. That’s why you get a cult of personality around the likes of Trump believing untrue things to be reality – or – religions claiming they are the One True Way – or – those of us who value science, logic, and reason over demagogues, opinion, and blind faith.
Each of these variations of reality forms around variations of collective consciousness.
The collective consciousness is like a soft down comforter on a cold winter night. It’s heavy, warm, and easy to snuggle into and lose yourself within. It gets adopted as being your own individual consciousness.
This becomes problematic when you focus on things that are false, bullshit, or otherwise untrue. The reinforcement of this in the collective then leads to conflict. Does that look familiar?
When we practice mindfulness and conscious awareness, we stand apart from the collective. We might still fall within it – but we make the choices and decisions for ourselves rather than let them be made for us.
Sometimes, we form small collectives. And that is what my wife and I share.
While we each make our own choices and decisions – they are done with consideration for one another.
Our life paths belong to each of us alone – but that doesn’t mean we walk them wholly alone. Recognizing and acknowledging this can go beyond you and me to the wider world.
I believe that that would help us to be more tolerant, accepting, and cooperative. And that would make the world a better place for everyone – don’t you think?
Who shares the journey on your life paths with you?
This is the five-hundred and fiftieth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using 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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