Walking a Path

In the span of three days, in three different books and websites, I read these three quotations.

The path is what happens--
it is not an end in itself.
In order to walk the path,
you have to become the path.

̶ Gary Snyder

When we are fully on one path, we are indirectly preparing another.

̶ Ryúnan Bustamante 

No matter what you do, no matter what happens,
it is impossible to leave the path.
Let me say that one more time:
No matter what you do, no matter what happens,
it is impossible to leave the path.

̶ Teddy Macker, excerpt from "A Poem for My Daughter"

I didn't go in search of statements about paths. You might say that without seeking the path, I found the path.

That's what happens, isn't it? You're proceeding along living your life. You turn around and consider what lies behind and there it is: the path you made. Short. Long. Direct. Circuitous. Branching. Rocky. Smooth. Monotonous. Scenic. 

Whatever it is, it's yours. Making the path that brought you to this point made you who you are. 

I imagine we all have pieces of ourselves we leave behind, and other pieces we wish we could leave behind. When I think about choices I wish I had made differently I have to remind myself that no matter how often I might think about something that happened or something I did, that doesn't change the past. It doesn't change the path I created. It brought me to who and where I am now. I have become the path.

If on the whole I like who I am now I have to recognize that I am this person because of everything on that path. Everything. 

If I am kind today it is not only because my mom emphasized kindness. It is also because at times I was unkind and I remember that and am ashamed. I don't spend time beating myself up for those moments. There is no point in being cruel to ourselves; the world does enough of that for us. I simply take the lesson learned: "Be kind. It is who you want to be and how you want to remember yourself when you look back at this moment from farther along your path."

More than one writer has said something along the lines of, "We find what we look for." That is, if I want to review the path behind through a framework in which I consider myself a person who makes mistakes, I'll definitely find mistakes to dwell on. If I want to review it through a framework in which I consider myself a kind person, or a caring person, or a person who likes to try new things, I'll find those moments as well. 

What's on the path that I enjoyed and that I want to experience again as I move forward? What are the qualities I have acquired coming to this point in my life that I want to reinforce, and which qualities do I want to consider setting down and leaving behind? What path am I preparing?

Related reading

Kindness Matters

3 Things My Mother Taught Me

A Life Manifesto. Or, as Oprah Would Say, Live Your Best Life

A Little Kindness

How I Came to Be a Bike Advocate

Lost Year. Lost Future?

Nothing anyone writes about 2020 can capture what it really felt like. Human memory doesn't want to hold onto horrors. We want to look away, look forward, move on. If we don't do that we risk sinking into existential dread, drowning in the realities that rise over our heads.

Because it was tragic, at a level we wouldn't believe if someone put it in a movie plot. It is still tragic. Even as I rejoiced in the amazing feeling of having coffee with a friend in a coffee shop--something I took for granted in January 2020, something I treasure as a special moment now--I have to live within these realities.

We still have deep, divisive, damaging racism embedded in everything about the way our world is structured. We've had it for far longer than white people like me recognized, even as we benefited.

We still have the devouring, thoughtless habits of careless consumption that will kill our species. Not the planet--it will survive, in some shape. The Earth doesn't need us to go on. We've lit the planet on fire and we're pouring more gasoline on it every day.

We still have the violent, strange, and polarizing politics that made the simple act of getting a shot--something most of us experienced as a child and yeah, I'm glad I didn't get measles, mumps, whooping cough, or polio, aren't you?--a dividing line.

We still have the yawning chasm between the wealth of a Jeff Bezos--who earns more in one second than some people make in an entire month of hard and thankless work that exposes them to the risk of a potentially deadly disease--and the desperation felt by someone who has to call the back seat of a car their bedroom because that's all they have left.

Historians describe turning points, which are easier to recognize in hindsight than in the moment. I have one particular turning point in mind, though there are many.

I remember my anger when 9/11 happened and I listened to then-President George Bush give us a rousing speech--about why we needed to show that we couldn't be beaten by going shopping. 

I'm the daughter of a World War II veteran. I know that when we were asked as a nation to rise to the challenge of the moment by changing our way of life we were able to grow victory gardens, save tin foil, reduce consumption at home so resources could go to our soldiers overseas. 9/11 could have been a turning point to ask that we reduce our dependence on foreign oil so we wouldn't end up making more enemies in the Middle East. We didn't have to put the lives of our own citizens and others into the tanks of our ever-larger vehicles.

We could have committed to a cleaner and greener future. We could have risen to the challenge. We still could.

And if we did that we would also be doing something to confront the terrible legacies of racism. We would be acknowledging and then reducing the greater burdens of pollution and death by traffic violence created by building an economic structure that asks people to spend more and more time driving farther and farther. We would be making healthier places for everyone. We would treat this lost year as a portal to the future that we want.

When I say "we" here, by the way, I mean "we white people who still hold the majority of decision-making power in this country in every sector." Because "we" is me. "We" is you if you're not speaking up, speaking out, taking action. If we can't collectively learn from this lost year then we have truly lost our future.