Don’t ask, walk!
or, meditations on 'the right path'
In November 2020, singer Nick Cave published a letter sent to him by a person named Lottie from Leeds, UK. I say letter, but it really was a single line that cut through like a knife, the same way it cut through the confidence and facade of many people round-about my age. The line was: How do I know I’m on the right path?”
Irritatingly, this question can be applied to nearly anything, narrow or broad. Am I on the right path in my career? Are we on the right path in this relationship? Am I on the right path in life? Right about now, usually, is when my brain tries to deflect the question and focus on something else. But Cave answers Lottie, and his answer is one that, if you’re like me, you’d write on a little piece of paper and stick in your back pocket to pull out when your compass seems broken.
Look around you. If there are others all moving in the same direction, and they look like you, and they move like you, and they all like the same things, and they hate the same things, and they are angry about the same things, and they are screaming about the same things, chances are you are on the wrong path.
This is a terribly tempting notion, if I’m being honest. Very rarely do anyone of us give ourselves permission to do something unconventional — the inertia built into us over decades keeps us rooted to our spot on the fence. If we gather our courage and jump onto the other side, like plunging into an icy pool, we almost immediately want to turn back. And Cave doesn’t assume that this new path would be the easier one. In fact, he says:
… you may be the one who shudders, you may be the one who spins and glows, you may be the one who shines, you may even be the one who bursts into flames, but even still, there you are and all along you go — your path, your path.
The mathematical obvious path, the one that seems written and charted out, will almost always seem like the “right path” for many reasons. It might be wholly accepted by society, might bring you a lot of money, might be what everyone thinksyou were meant to do, might even be something you’re quite competent at. But that doesn’t give it a free pass to being the right path for you.
I’m thinking of network effects (and we’re also stumbling a little into free will territory here): the lives we live are a combination of our own decisions and the influence and preference of the society and networks we’re a part of. Which is why the right path, the easiest path, might often be the one that most of the crowd subscribed to. But that’s just one path! One path in a numberless other paths! Like Maria Popova of The Marginalian writes in her book, Figuring, “There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives”.
It is very tempting to look about for a map that you can roll out and put Xs on so you know exactly where you’re going, where you’ll stop, and where you’ll take a left. Sadly and happily, that isn’t how life works. A rephrasing of the original question I pose could also be: “how should I live?” Carl Jung responded to someone who asked him exactly this question:
Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can. There is no single, definite way for the individual which is prescribed for him or would be the proper one.
As long as we do, with conviction and interest, the next necessary thing, we are probably going to find ourselves on the path that is intended for us. But I think exercising agency helps, as does giving ourselves permission to take one step out of line and see where that gets us. Some rules are arbitrary, some ceilings are the ones forced on us by others or even ourselves. It’s a hard undertaking, to be honest, and one that involves a lot of crossroads and navel-gazing and anxiety. I’m figuring this out for myself, too. But I take comfort in this paragraph from an essay in Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations:
No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead?
Don’t ask, walk!
Down the rabbit hole
Morgan Housel: I Have a Few Questions
Nick Cave: The Red Hand Files
Escaping Flatland: Two Kinds of Introspection
The way that I know that I'm on the right path is that I ask my instincts, and my instincts always know. Now this sounds way easier than it is. It took me 36 years of "stopping-and-starting" and 36 years of listening to what I thought was my instincts but was something else entirely.
I think that trusting your instincts is hardest when you're in your early 20's, you're still young, haven't had much time with yourself yet, and you don't have a ton of experience to draw from.
You've got to read alot, make mistakes, and learn alot before you learn where your instincts are exactly located.
When you go to a job because you love what you accomplish each day, and not just for the thick paycheck, you've found "the right path".
I've been on a path of my own and I never really realized it until now. But slowly, slowly, the path will also disappear in the future and what's left is just living in each moment as authentically as I can. That living may look conventional on the outside but for the one standing here, it will be the one and only real way to be.