Being able to choose among endless possibilities, isn’t that what freedom is? Isn’t it great to make our own path through life rather than walk the pathway that was predestined to us?
Perhaps.
But, to me, it seems that the increased complexity of life and the ability to have more freedom of choice puts more pressure on us to make decisions about what we want our life to be.
The price of freedom? Yeah.
But, sometimes it feels as though I stand at a crossroad, surrounded by the endless possibilities and decisions available to me at any moment.
And from these lucrative pathways come insistent whispers, bombarding my poor mind with promises of honors and riches.
Throbbing pain erupts in my head as I try to listen to them all.
There are too many paths and too many decisions to make.
Oh, why is there no path that shines brighter than the others, or even just a single path?
No matter how ragged that path may be, it still would have been better than standing here waiting an eternity, only to grow weaker and weaker until I diminish without having chosen a path, dying without having done anything.
With all that remains to be the footprints scorched to the ground where I waited for so long, but even they will dissipate in the end.
However, this is only “sometimes”. Because a more recent way of thinking about it that has crossed my mind is this:
What if the road before us is muddled but for the immediate next step? And what if the only way we can figure out what path we are really on is by looking behind our shoulders.
Because we really can’t stop walking, can we? The path shapes itself from the decisions we make in each and every moment. Perhaps there was no “right” path to begin with, but only illusions of what might have been.
After all. We have now and only now.
Not thinking about the path is in that sense, the path.
Benjamin Bratz 