We all want the answer to life’s burning question: What path do I choose? Better yet, we want to be shown the shortcut between where we are now and ever-lasting happiness. To take the long path to a meaningful life and, in effect, happiness means we will have to feel the pain of passing the time. Is the timing even right to change paths?
In life, we have many opportunities to follow paths that lead to the meaning of life. Sometimes, it means having to carve out your path; other times, it means following a well-beaten path. But throughout your life, you will be presented a new path every second; it is up to you to become a master at selecting a new path at the right time.
Once you become a master of changing paths, you have found the meaning of your life. Because it is not the destination or the result of the current path you’re on that feeds you, its the faith of knowing that whatever path you are on is the right one, and with that faith, you can change paths at any time without worry. Worry that your path will lead you wrong.
I had faith to walk a new path many times
It has been five years almost to the day that I started this blog. It was a new path in my life. I had no idea where that path would lead me. At the time, I didn’t even really feel that I was walking a new path, but turns out I was. Mired in a career in software development that wasn’t serving me, I didn’t know that that first blog post would send me down a path of an entirely new career.
Here I am, five years later, getting paid to write blog posts. My coding days are long past me now. Somedays, when my head gets foggy, I worry that the new career path I’ve chosen may not be transferrable should anything happen to the company I work for. But you know what? I can’t allow that worry to grow. I am learning to have faith that this path will lead me right and that it may just lead to another path in life that will fulfill me even more.
TEDx talk and book all came from a single step on a new path
Looking back at all of the other paths in my life, from telling my childhood abuse story to my wife for the first time, that lead to me eventually standing on stage doing a TEDx talk about it, and then writing a book about it. To the path of having our son that lead me even to contemplate telling my abuse story.
All of these paths had led me to be where I am today. The history of my path choosing gives me faith every day that the path that I am leading today will lead me to figure out what this life I’m living means tomorrow. Each of these paths was chosen on gut instinct, and not on opportunistic timing. I somehow trusted in my faith that things would turn out, and I could handle the outcome whatever it turned out to be.
There are no wrong paths in life
There are no wrong paths in life, just wrong timing. But be assured that right now, at this instant, you have the opportunity to change paths. As the great George Michael once said in a song: “Ooh, I gotta have faith.”
You can’t go wrong walking the right path. You know the time is right, start walking a new path.