When No Roads Diverge in the Yellow Wood

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they are confronted with the unknown.  There seems to be no paths diverging in the yellow wood.  So the first thing we tend to do is sit in the clearing of trees and rest.  As time slips past, impatience and frustration seeps into our nature.  We start by remembering the easy times of times past.  This thought steps down a floor to wishing that the path was still that way.  Time continues mock and still, no path appears in the trees.  Our anxiety grows higher and higher until we are no longer upset solely about the lack of direction, but we are upset that we are upset.  We desperately try to rid ourselves of the feeling and hope to hope that a path just…appears.  Desperation leads us to over think, over analyze, predict the future, and over stress.  This boils our anxiety to the point of what we th  We can’t stand waiting here.  The darkness of the forest and the depths of our feelings seem tangible.   
ink is hysteria.

Eventually it becomes too much and we cry out to…something, and while different cultures and peoples cry out to different things, it seems a funny thing that we all cry out to a being or power that is above our own.  It’s then that we find that it is in our nature to reach out and to believe in divinity.  That is the way we were created.  As we plead and beg, all of our despair seems to escape us out of two spheres of light.  As our cheeks are salted, we explain our situation to Deity.  Then, as if by surprise, we realize that a certain calmness has covered us.  When did the calmness enter?  We can’t even remember.  Our thoughts are still ambiguous, but that doesn’t seem to trouble us like before.  All we know is that the despair is lessened.  We have peace; the absence of conflict in our hearts as we feel those devious feelings of desperation slowly drawn out of us.  Only now are we able to have a clear enough mind to get up off the ground and move. 

Once on our feet, we begin to walk around the clearing, searching for an answer.  We move branches, step into thickets, sweep away the undergrowth, and continue.  Finally we see the path a few steps past a fallen tree.  Our initial excitement is stifled by a nagging doubt, “This can’t be right.  It should be clear as day.  Why is this fallen tree blocking the path”?  And while these questions circle, we feel an instinctive nudge down the path.  This nudge feels unique to every single person.  The endless accounts of people hearing a voice, feeling a pressing hand, seeing a mental picture, getting a clear thought, gaining an unyielding desire or motivation, or having other paths blocked from our view entirely, all fade as we feel within ourselves our own, unique “nudge”.  Words, the greatest inadequacy in describing human emotion, don’t have the specificity to explain how we know that this is the right path and despite the nagging doubts in our head, we go forward. 

The fallen tree is the first of many obstacles.  This doesn’t settle our doubts, but we still trudge forward.  We start to wonder if we made the right choice.  “Was there another path that we didn’t see”?  This kind of thinking slows us down and we trip and stumble on smaller obstacles in the path because we are too preoccupied to see.  The path continues upwards.  We see the summit of the mountain miles above us.  That is our goal.  We try to keep our eyes glued to that goal, true north.  Although we have our eyes up, we continue to trip over rocks, roots, shrubs, and logs which is frustrating because don’t understand why this is happening.  Our eyes are on our goal right?  We look ahead on the trail and see pieces of it going up the mountain.  We look back and see that our trail has guided us safely around impassible chasms that would have lead to our end.  We grow in our sense of assurance that we are on the right path.  The thought then occurs to us that we need to avoid the small rocks before we can make it to the top.  Our feet are offended with the constant barrage of hindrances.  So we take our eyes off the summit and glance two steps ahead of us.  We are able to negotiate our foot placement much better.  We put our subconscious, child-like trust in the path.  We’ve had assurances that help us to know that we’ll end at the top, but we can’t look too far ahead or we’ll continue to trip on the little decisions placed before us. 

After miles of our journey, we get to a resting place towards the top of the mountain.  We have come so far, and while we aren’t nearly at the summit yet, we can see much more of the path behind us from higher ground.  We look and see to our surprise, the little clearing from our past.  The memory of that clearing floods our vision and while it was very hard, we look back at that moment with a loving fondness.  For we see now, that who we are now was made in that patch of woods.  Where we are now, was decided amongst those trees.  We come to this and our view of that instance changes to that of a parent witnessing a child trying a new skill and for the first time, for so we were, in that little space of trees so long ago.