03-10-2010 / The Path To Follow

The Path To Follow

One of the many problems life has is that it doesn't come packaged with an instruction manual, which opens everything to a myriad of possibilities. Sometimes it's liberating, sometimes it's stressful and confusing.

There are those who follow the path already tried and tested by others and follow it until it ends. There are others who make their own way where there is none, with the implicit risk of failing like the rest or succeeding where others could not.

We're told that school is a way to prepare us for the future but the grim reality is that school is nothing more than an expensive day care that in the end provides us with a paper that states that, indeed, we went to that day care and we may have learned something along the way.

But the fact is that we are not prepared to face the decision shown in the photograph above: Which path to follow for the rest of our lives?

This is something that haunts us for our entire lifetime; when we're young we have an idea of what we want to be when we grow up based on what makes the most impact on us at that moment, but as we grow older, some remain on that idea, others doubt it and others change their opinion completely (by own decision or because somebody or circumstances pushed them away).

I've always believed that asking a teenager what are his or her plans for life is posing an extremely stressful question on such confused shoulders considering all the changes that are already occurring.

However, in the end, a path must be chosen.

All of us can't follow the same road; even though these days the concept of how important groups are is pushed beyond our eyeballs, individuality is also important.

Each person is a universe, and thus, we cannot fit in the same mold.

Considering the fact that each and every one of us has to live with the consequences of the decisions we take, choosing a path to follow is one of the most important choices a person can ever take.

And yet, it's one where people interferes the most by shoving their opinions on it.

My recommendation has always been the following: choose a path where you can do what you want, not what others want you to do, because when all it's said and done, when you feel you wasted your life because you listened to others, when you feel frustrated because you didn't achieve what you wanted, when you realize time is up, the only person who will be there to pay the piper will be yourself, because it was you who allowed others to distract or deviate you.

Something else to keep in mind at all times is that when you realize that the path you're on no longer works, you can always choose another. The key is to not linger on the useless one more than necessary.

Paths and roads can take you to all sorts of places, however, the key question you must always pose to yourself should be: will this path take me to the destination I'm looking for?

Select carefully, and remember, where there is no path, you can always make one.

You're invited to my Flickr gallery.