Most times when we step onto a path we know where it’s going to lead. When we can’t see where that is we find comfort in the footprints that precede us. And when its bleakest to see we listen for the voices that have left their remnants along the way in the hope that they guide us.
At times, our own paths look nothing like that.
They’re more like driving on roads with no roads signs to unknown destinations. They’re more like finding comfort in the virtues of our own expectations. They’re more like listening to the voices of those that have done it before in the hope that we might one day.
They mostly sound like “Rome wasn’t built in a day” or “Good things come to those who wait” – or some quote behind some waterfall on Instagram.
And there’s times when we internalize those voices or see those destinations and play them out in our heads in the hope that they’ll become our reality – and maybe there’s times when they make that road slightly more bearable.
But sometimes we wake up and realize that we don’t want to build Rome. That we just want to finish that degree. Or get that promotion. Or get to that thing that shouldn’t take as long as it is.
And in those moments we want something to make that path smoother.
We want to remove the rocks, the pebbles and the dirt.
Often its because we think that those impurities on our path are deflections from our own direction. We look at them like obstacles to the place we want to go to.
We often don’t think of paths as compilations of impurities. Of obstacles overcome time and time again.
And even though it might have taken a while, they were moulded by their own to process to become what they are today.
And that’s not a bad thing.
© Hudson Biko
Photograph: Warren Wong
Previously published by Thought Catalog at www.thoughtcatalog.com.
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