The path to remaining true to yourself is like a life-long trek up the side of a treacherous mountain. If the exposure doesn’t get to you first there are always the tough scrambles, steep ledges, crumbling rocks, plenty of opportunities to get sidetracked and lost, wrong signposts, misinformation, and almost certainly no shortcuts or hacks.
Once on the path. You keep moving.
And you hope that the guidebooks are right, ‘by the time you get to the top you realise the walk was worth it, the view will take your breath away, unlike no other, unique and incomparable’.
While walking your path it’s a single track, with only room for you. You may be utterly surprised that when you do reach a rest point you meet plenty of others who have walked before you and more are behind.
Where you thought you were walking alone, you realise that others have been making the ascent. Not with you. But just over there, nearby.
You only understand what your journey has/is taking out of you, but slowly you begin to learn that others have struggled walking their path too. That they have found the walk to be utterly exhausting and emotionally draining at times. That at times, just like you, they have also wanted to turn back around and walk back down. Why walk the be true to yourself path when easier walks which have been carved and trailed by many are available?
If we only noticed and understood that everyone is walking up the side of a mountain day in and day out.
That we are all weighed down by something as we step. If we recognised rest points in our day-to-day living, moments when we catch someone eyes, when we accidentally bump into someone, when we brush past another and looked closely and deeply they too have had their own pain, loaded with suffering and struggling, lost and in fear, overwhelmed and bruised by the journey, If only we could see that.
If we simply and lovingly realised that we are not alone but it’s a solitary journey.
There will be people you meet along the way who will see all the effort you are making, and they will be able to share their experiences with you. Ultimately you to have to walk on your own. You have to stick to your own trail. But take a look up every now and again, look deeply, notice the loads we are all carrying. The very moment we cannot see that load in others is when we stop feeling compassion, and when we stop feeling that what is the point of walking?
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