Friday, February 26, 2016

Lost in the forest


In densely populated areas there is usually not a forest that is big enough for us to truly get lost. We may not take the right path right away, but pretty soon we will get where we set out on going.
Wilderness areas are of course a whole different matter! Those usually are plenty big enough to get lost in; sometimes even to the point of not being found after something has happened to us.

Nowadays we also have to navigate the ‘urban jungle’. And while there are Apps and other tools to help us find our way, they are not always a guarantee that we actually get there without some considerable frustration.

But perhaps the most difficult area to find our way is life itself.

From a very young age we find markers on our path that send us in the ‘right direction’. However, what is the right direction?

One might argue that the right direction is the one that leads us to be upstanding citizens. Trustworthy, even loyal human beings who will ~ when it comes down to it ~ do ‘the right thing’.
Yet who will determine what ‘the right thing’ is?

For some that may mean to step in our father’s footsteps and lead the family business. For others that can lead to a lifetime of taking care of everybody around us. ‘The right thing’ can be a path that guides us to wealth, to security, and to a lifetime of being very reasonable people.

And then one day we may wake up to find that the comfortable framework we have build our lives around is tumbling. That even though it was structured and acceptable, it never was set in concrete. We may find that being a reasonable person may have felt right, however, it may also have lured us into the security of being average. Tolerable.

It can be an awakening that leaves us lost in the forest.
We know that there is no going back.
We know that what we had considered ‘the right thing’ may be the right thing for other people, but we require something different. We need a new direction!

At that point there are many paths, many roads that open up for us. We may see many markers, pointing us in all kinds of different ways. Markers that are put up by others who claim to know what is best. Others who declare they know where we should go…

Chances are that they don’t know us, that they don’t know where we desire to go, and that they have no way of knowing what the best way for us to proceed is…
Chances are that even though we feel lost in the forest, now is the time for us to find our own way, our own path.
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