Life's Path

Each step along Life’s Path, contrary to popular belief, is not mapped out for us to tap into the higher power to be delineated for us. Instead, we must select a route on our own, by first allowing ourselves to utilize the talents we have nurtured within us and express the goals that reside in our hearts.

The problems come when we decide to step off our Life Paths, and let someone else take the responsibility for determining who and what we shall be. We may try to bend our identities to suit peer pressure, our parents a lover, our teachers, or perhaps an advisor. Whoever we have placed as our priority, if we relinquish our rightful responsibility to say who we are and what we will do with our lives, we begin to lay out a path full of thorns: hurt, dissatisfaction, even anger.

In truth, you are the only person who has a right to plan where you will go in your life. If you have given up that right to someone else, you set yourself up to inner conflict, resentment, perhaps even feelings of failure. And these feelings will be with you until the point where you are willing to stand up and declare the path you want to take.

If you feel stuck, consider taking a backward view of life. That is, try to project yourself onto the end of your Life Path, not to imagine how you will pass, rather to take a look backward and see what you want to have accomplished in your life. Imagine giving your own eulogy. Will you report that you were a loving parent, sister or brother? Did you help the poor? Did you create things that brought beauty into the world? Did you do a thankless, but necessary task for society? Did you keep people safe? Did you teach new things? Did you ease someone’s pain?

The bottom line for what you are meant to do, is to help others. The how is entirely up to you. We don’t live in a vacuum. We receive by giving. Our payment is the smile on someone’s face.

This is not to deny that each person has needs to be fulfilled: needs for food, shelter, sleep and needs of the body. These are biological and come with powerful drives. But these can be dealt with as we pursue our goals for self-expression.

Choose your path, but realize it is yours and no one else’s. That is the key to real fulfillment.