Thought for the day ….

“In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved their title. Do not lose your knowledge that mankind’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels UNLIMITED ROADS. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check YOUR ROAD and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.”

“People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don’t sit looking at it – walk.”

AYN RAND

The short answer is that I have found a road. Not the road. But a road. And one which has no route, plan or direction. One which is not so much a road, but a sensual pathway.

I realised that traversing a structured line (built in some ways by myself), walking up and down was altogether the wrong way. And so, I am not traveling up or down. I am traveling IN the road. It takes me where it will. I am along for the ride. And conversely, my journey is so much more fulfilling than if I had a vague route, or directive, or apparent destination in my mind. I see, and feel more.

How often do we find, the final terminus of a route, or even its eventual approach, to be so much unlike the place we had envisaged, as we took that line, be it straight or curved, to where we thought we wanted to go. Expectation grew with every footstep. Yet the walk founded on apparently well-mapped intentions.. was a road which led back where we set off. Back to ourselves.

And so, this sensual pathway. With it.. my journey IS my destination. I ‘sense’ the contours. Each and every corner is a new place. And if I wish to spin on the spot, and then stop, giddy, I can then point.. ‘let’s go this way’. And nearly always, it finds me a something, or a somewhere I did not know. But strangly, once there, feel that I always knew.

Once, back there, I used to believe I could arrive at my desired terminus, by drawing a map. My map. And then blindly plotting a course. But that ethereal string of map pins in my head, was in fact the path which constricted my travel.

Where you are, the junction you stand at right now, is one of many, many destinations. It the HERE we so often sacrifice for the NOW we never reach. I find staring at those horizons… we miss the beauty around our feet.

So, my dear Dina, don’t take the road you feel you should. Don’t take a road at all. Be open. And let the road take you.

I may just have to help you get your comments with excerpts on the front page. Fantastic comments. Proof again that sharing soulfood is a way to riches.