Friday, December 6, 2024

a unique path up the mountain

 

driven


I think the secret is to decide who we are

without a puppet-master pulling our strings,

perhaps the louder culture outside us 

who doesn't really know us,


I fear the metaphor where all of us are individuals at a buffet

where we choose whatever feels good to us at the moment,


I also worry about the metaphor that we are puppets,

that we should exist to be following the dictates of another,

that God's plan is for us to just do what the greater requires,


perhaps the metaphor should be that there is a mountain,

and our charge is to hike a path up

that makes the most sense to our full self,

that being "driven" is not as close to truth

as finding one's own way,

that our self-worth comes from how true to our gifts we are,

and that who we are can be not just "driven,"

but driving a unique path forward,

I don't know what my unique path forward is going to be in retirement,

I fear substituting different hoops to jump through

and somehow not quite walking up my own path up this mountain.



by Henry H. Walker
November 26, ‘24

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