We make our paths, and our paths make us

Nice post, but the entire framing is based on a simplistic metaphor — that there are paths ‘out there’, to be used or ignored, as if on a Life Menu.

But there is no Chef, so I think the truth is a little more subtle: we make our path as our path makes us; we decide where to tread, but that decision changes us, to which we react with our next step, and so on.

One of the ways our paths make us is through the encounters we experience as our paths intersect with others.

So perhaps the best path is not the high-speed one leading most efficiently to the destination we thought we wanted, but the path that will take us to the most interesting encounters; that allows us to travel slowly enough to make each encounter worthwhile and change direction when we realise, suddenly, that the destination we fixed ourselves when we set out was for the person we were, not who we are today.