Why Choose Any Path at All?
Why choose any path at all?
You always get to decide things, whether consciously or subconsciously. Doing so consciously gives you influence and control.
There is no reason that you need to choose a path in life.
You can simply go about your day-to-day activities, and let life happen.
This might make you perfectly content. You may enjoy what life has to offer, and the adventure of your life may be ongoing and already acceptable to you. If that’s how it is, more power to you. You go with your bad self.
If, however, you are not content, desire to have more influence and control over your life, then you might want to seek and find paths to take.
This means different things to different people. No two paths are alike, though they can be similar. Further, how you traverse a given path is going to differ with each experience.
But why? Why not just let “life live you,” as I call it? Isn’t it easier to just go with the flow and not be specific about a path to anywhere in particular?
Why choose any path at all? Short answer – because there is more to life than just living.
For the longer explanation, please keep reading.
Why not let life live you?
For some people, this is a no brainer. All you have to do is exist.
I guess for some people that’s enough. Just exist. Get up in the morning, go to work. Do your job. Go home. Watch some TV. Relax over the weekend. Repeat on Monday.
But most people, as far as I can tell, seem to still be wanting something along the way. Very few people I have ever encountered are completely satisfied to just let life live them.
What does that even mean? You have, as far as I can tell, three options for how to exist in this lifetime. It is entirely possible to hop between these. It is also possible to exist in spaces between them. But overall they are the primary means by which more-or-less everyone lives.
- Let life live you. Just go with the flow, let the day-to-day pattern draw you along.
- Curl up in a ball and await death. Be miserable, look only to the end of this existence with scorn and displeasure. This is the least pleasant outlook on life.
- Grab life like a bull by the horns and go for a ride. Take charge. Do cool things. Experience all this life has to offer.
The primary issue is whether you seek out the various and sundry adventures of life and the paths you can take, or just follow along as it happens. Live within the daily patterns. Accept your lot in life and don’t push for anything else or something better.
Letting life live you means you probably find certain things wanting. Sure, this is totally an option you can take…but odds are you won’t be much satisfied with it.
No path is permanent
Nothing in this life is written in stone. Your destiny is not an absolute notion that is utterly inescapable. There are always choices, always options, and you get to decide upon them.
Even if you allow life to live you, and just go with the flow of things, there are going to be decisions to be made. You will have choices. Many of these are pretty insignificant, like what you are going to wear today, what you will eat for lunch, which road to drive down to get to work, what to watch on TV, and so on.
Even the insignificant take you down certain paths.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you zig when you should have zagged unexpected shit might happen. Even when you zag the unexpected could crop up. My point is that you always make choices and those choices always take you somewhere or other.
Some of the paths you will take are extremely short. A few of them may be nothing more than the equivalent of walking from your front door to the sidewalk. Each and every path is impermanent and can be changed.
You get to choose this. Even when you don’t choose you have, as such, made a choice. If not choosing leaves you content – then go for it. But if you are discontent and wishing for something different, the ball is now in your court.
Making conscious choices
A great many of the choices you will make in this life will be subconscious. This is because the world today is a place that can be extremely intimidating. Further, much of what is put out there for you to encounter are messages of fear, lack, scarcity, and other negativity.
The big picture matters can be all-encompassing, and they can make you feel really small. Your life might seem unimportant and you could be made to feel insignificant. These messages of disempowerment are like waves in the ocean, constantly washing over you. Just keeping atop them can be a challenge.
What if, rather than just floating, you choose to swim?
This is where seeing the path or paths before you becomes a matter of consciousness. Rather than just allowing your subconscious to lead you along, you actively make the choices and decisions on which paths you desire to take in your life.
Consciousness creates reality. This is done when you are mindful. Mindfulness is awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and actions in the now. Awareness is consciousness. Recognizing this will open you up to being able to see a path and choose if it is a place you desire to go.
Even when you make a conscious choice you are not trapped within it. You can change it. You can leave it for another. That’s one of the best things about this philosophy. Nothing is written in stone.
Why Choose Any Path at All?
This world is full of wonders. The various natural landscapes you can explore, incredible structures the human race has created, the potential to live in any environment – from the harshest desert to the deepest ocean to the iciest mountaintop – all of this can be experienced by you.
You are made of potential. There is infinite possibility within you. It doesn’t matter what you have done up to now, it is possible to do, be, or have something different. If you are unsatisfied with your life you can seek to change that.
Recognizing any path is a matter of being conscious of your mindset. This allows you to choose for yourself. It opens you up to using your vast empowerment to find and/or create a life that excites and thrills you.
THAT is why. It is the unrealized possibility that is why to choose any path at all. You always get to decide things, whether consciously or subconsciously. Doing so consciously gives you influence and control. Ergo, you get to not just live, but experience so much more life.
One the one hand this can be scary. But on the other hand, this is oh-so-exciting. The choice is yours to make.
I see the paths I am taking for my life…are you consciously choosing paths for yourself?
This is the four-hundred and thirteenth entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas for, and my personal experiences with, walking along the path of life to consciously create reality. I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. I also desire to empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-blog and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here. My additional writing works, both fiction and non-fiction, are available here.
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