Everyone is on their own journey. They all start out at the same place, but how far they go is up to them.
At the beginning there are several paths and we don't get to choose which one to take. If we are lucky we will be led down the one with fewest thorns and nettles possible, but at the beginning the choice isn't ours.
We grow and we learn and then our guidance lets go of our hand, but is still there beside us, telling us what to do.
We reach a cross roads where we can choose to go left, right or straight on - or unseen option 4, go off the track. 'Off the beaten path', as they say.
We may listen to our guidance. We may listen to the others. OR we may listen to ourselves - that's totally out of this world, baby!
Now that your guidance is merely your critical audience you no longer NEED to listen to them to survive. You may deliberately do the opposite your guidance says just to rebel against them and prove to yourself that you are free.
However, you have probably made a few friends with the people one your path and may regret leaving them. You may end up taking the same path as them. This is possibly out of fear that if you take a different path alone there may be more nettles and denser thickets which you will have to endure alone.
The scariest option of them all is making up your own mind and forging a new path. What if you get lost? What if you end up alone? It's scary and that's why most people stick to the tried and tested, the paths.
But would life not be more thrilling off of the path? More satisfying, surely.
Whoever you listen to and whichever route you choose you will eventually encounter some thorns.
The thorns will hurt you but you will recover quickly. First, though, you face a choice.
You can turn back and try a different path because you can see that some people seem to have reached their destination without thorns but whichever way you go...you WILL encounter thorns.
You can give up, resign, throw your hands up in despair and stay miserably where you are.
Or you can push though the thorns until you get to the thorns until you get to the field of daisies on the other side and then keep going, enjoying the experience as you go and knowing that the thorns make you stronger.
Listen to yourself, come off the path, push through the thorns. You'll get there in the end.
xoxo Kati.
P.S: Isn't the joy and pure happiness you feel in the daisy field much stronger than that of the pain from the thorns? Yes, I thought so.
P.P.S: It doesn't have to be a field of daisies, if you know that I mean!
