So many divergent paths, how is it that we knew which ones to take? Did you ever wonder where they all lead? Or do we scarce have time to think when these crossroads reveal themselves? I feel we live our lives by instinct and there is no such thing as a wrong path, because each person’s instincts are a guide to who they are.
Our vices are as much a part of us as our virtues; we are the sum of all our parts. The us with our family, the us alone, the us with friends and the us with her; we are the sum of ourselves. Our instincts unlocking the door for each, presenting the best of us to those we love and the worst of us to our enemies…or is it the other way around, I forget at times.
If we flew up real high, could we see these paths with clarity? All the crossroads and our journey through them, like some elaborate game of connecting the dots. My mother’s miscarriage guaranteeing my existence. My sister’s early marriage changing my home. A friend falling sick and shifting the date forward by one fateful day.
Are our lives an elaborate jigsaw puzzle, just waiting to be put into place? Are we all just waiting to be solved? Or are instincts much like inertia through dominos, an invisible guiding force to which we are bound. With only fractions of time to decide our future, we ebb and flow from moment to moment and it is only when we stop to breathe do we find ourselves in a different place.
They say it’s not the destination but the journey that counts, but I’ve always found that it’s the dots, those reflective crossroads where I could stop and think back on the journey, and not the lines connecting them that make me into me. Only when I learn where my instinct seeks to lead me, by looking back at where it has taken me do I learn who I am.
Is learning all that I can do, is there no way to change where I am being lead? There is a concept of the stream of time in fantasy literature that I am quite fond of. That even if we could travel back in time, we couldn’t change our actions because consequences rarely have a unique and distinct source that once changed would ripple through reality and change our future. Indeed, any moment in the past is a convergence of many different paths which collectively reinforce each other, we are mere pebbles thrown into a river with its own set course.
But every river ends, and every end is a new beginning. Learning what we are today is the most important part of changing what we can become tomorrow. Unless alchemy has been rediscovered rock cannot be turned into gold, we cannot make ourselves anew; at least not instantly. Which is fine by me, after all what is that they say about all that glitters?
