The Aimless

Once, on long journey, I met a traveler standing at a fork in the road. He looked back and forth between the paths as if trying to make a decision.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked him, thinking that I could maybe help.

“I have no destination in mind,” he said, “and both paths look nice.  The first heads down hill and I guess leads to coast where I could walk along the beach and listen to the gulls. The other heads up into mountains, it will be more of a climb, but the views and the fresh crisp air will be worth it. ”

“Then why not just pick one of them? I asked. “It sounds like you’d enjoy both routes, but standing here means you’re not experiencing either of them.”

“Because picking one path means giving up on the dreams of the other.”

I left him standing there at fork, glad I had destination in mind

The two paths

Again I find myself caught in that great dilemma of life: to renounce the world and its things completely, or to run wild fanatic fervour, taking in all the pleasures that hedonistic life has to offer. I could be inspiring on either path. There is truth on both of them; perhaps one is no better than the other.

Yet there is fear there. Fear that the wrong choice has been made. Fear that this limited life is being wasted running down one road to find nothing at the end. What greater curse would there be to renounce everything of the world only at death to have found out this is all there is? Or worse, to give way to passion and discover at the end that there was some attainable, higher goal, or higher state that was missed for momentary pleasure?

Some might say that the best choice would be to walk the middle ground. Yet what a bland dull life that would seem to be: the path of the masses and not of the heroes. It would be the suburbs of life, a halfway place where the benefits and curses are neither strong nor weak and a dull colourless existence at best.

But it's here in the strange half way purgatory I always seem to end up. A shard of metal caught between two poles. A branch swinging in opposing currents. Here I am neither able to choose one nor the other and am cursed all the more for knowing there is choice that can be made.

` If only I could really know.