Breadcrumbs

Of course it never works the way you plan it. If life followed some predictable road map into the future, with all of the distractions neatly set apart from the road so you could cruise past without stopping, you’d just not bother with it.

If you could tell what was coming up, and make sure that you had everything you need with which to master it, tame it, or overcome it, you’d never actually know what you could be capable of.

Perhaps it’s more like this: a haphazard scattering of crumbs in a darkened wood, a tantalizing trail which misleads you into thinking that you have your bearings. Abruptly, the trail ends: a flock of misshapen and random birds are pecking. Looking at you. Mocking you. Their gleaming red eyes challenging you- where to now, mister- where to now?

You have no choice but to take a rag, wrap it around your eyes, and reel blindly through the undergrowth. The security in doing this comes from having the knowledge, deep down, that somewhere in the lightless overgrown mass is a clearing. A couple of trees, felled by a forgotten storm, or a pond, circled by the tiny footprint signatures of those who come to drink in the night.

You may not know where you’re heading, but from the clearing, you can see a mountain in the distance. It won’t be easy to get there, with your head to the forest floor, but you know where it is now. Even if it takes the most circuitous route possible to get there, and you emerge at its foot with your shins barked by rogue roots, your skin alive with the light scarring of thorns, you’ll end up where you need to be, at that time, for that reason. It’s inevitable.