Itās always been easier for me to believe in other peopleās ability than than to believe in my own. People I love, I can see their paths so clearly. I cheer for them. I hold faith on their behalf. But when it comes to me? I start grasping for formulas. The ārightā way. The ārightā choice. The perfectly intuitive, divinely inspired, no-regrets route.
But life doesn’t unfold that way. No matter how closely you listen, no matter how tapped in you think you are detours happen. Feelings change. Dreams shift. And somehow, even after all the self-work, that still feels like failure.
Somewhere along the way, it clicked for me:
If I could just get it: right say the right thing, work hard enough, be disciplined enough, dedicated enough, then Iād finally feel secure.
But every time I arrived at what I thought was the destination⦠it never felt like Iād pictured. And that threw me.
If the outcomes didnāt match the effort, if they didnāt feel like relief, or clarity, or belonging–then where was my path? What had I actually been working toward?
Law school was supposed to be my āright choice.ā It checked all the boxes. It made sense. It gave me something to point to when the rest of my life felt blurry. But I knew, even early on, that I couldnāt commit my life to a system I donāt believe in. And still, I clung to it. Because walking away felt like walking into the unknown with no map, no backup plan, no proof that I wasnāt just quitting.
I didnāt know how to trust the step without the destination. I kept hoping someone, somewhere, would tell me what to do. And the silence I felt when no answer came? It made me think Iād missed something. That Iād failed at discerning the ārightā thing. That if I were more faithful, more in tune, moreā¦whatever, Iād have known.
But maybe thatās the trap. This belief that certainty is the reward for being good enough. That clarity is earned. Maybe I was never meant to decode a path. Maybe I was meant to make one.
The truth was: I didnāt know what to choose. Not consciously. Not in a way I could act on. And I canāt know the unknown. No one can.
Still, I treated every decision like a tightrope. One step off-center and itās all over. One direction wasnāt āspiritual enough.ā, the other wasnāt ārealistic enough.ā I worried if I stayed, Iād be betraying myself and blocking my path. I worried if I left, it meant I didnāt have faith, that I could convince myself of anything to get out of following through. I wondered if I was someone whoād never finish anything, someone who always fled in fear.
It felt like failure no matter what.
But what if there was never a tightrope at all? What if thereās no one right thing? What if the path isnāt something you follow, but something you co-create? What if each step is just⦠another step?
Maybe the path is a series of loops. Maybe itās steep hills and strange detours. Maybe thereās no forward or back– just this moment, and then the next.
And maybe the yellow brick road was never yellow to begin with. (if you know me, you know I have personal beef with Ms. G(a)linda the āGoodā Witch š¾, but thatās another post for another day. š)
The path wasnāt made of gold; the bricks were never yellow. That golden glow youāre seeing? Itās coming from you. You are your own light source. The path only becomes illuminatedā golden because youāre walking on it.
So maybe the story in your head says you have to finish undergrad in four years. Fall in love by 25. Become the first doctor in your family. Know your purpose by 30. But if you donāt? If it takes you longer? If you leave or change your mind or reroute completely?
Thatās not failure. Thatās texture. Thatās story.
Where would your feet take you if you werenāt using your path to prove anything? If you didnāt need your choices to be evidence of worthiness? What if life isnāt about finding the one right step, but learning, through experience, the rhythm and pace of your own story?
If Iām being honest, uncertainty still terrifies me. As a late bloomer, Iāve never really felt like my process was on the same timeline as everyone else. Things that seem natural to other people feel so slow to me, itās like no movement at all. And then, suddenly, disorientingly–I wake up in a new reality, but my mind still thinks Iām in the before I’d only ever known.
But the ebbs and flows of life are teaching me that the fastest way to your destination is often slow. The most aligned action is usually flow. And force? Force just creates are resistance that isnāt always necessary. A different outcome doesnāt always mean a worse one. There is life beyond our narrow definitions of success. There is fertile ground to walk on, well beyond the shaky wires of the tightrope.
So I guess Iām writing this to say (to myself as much as you): I know finding your way isn’t always easy. But maybe it could be a bit easier if we were open to trust. Donāt force your feet in the direction you think they should go. Let them land where they do, and honor that landing.
There is no yellow brick road to follow. There is only the light entrusted to you, your sense of self. And your job, now and always, is to cradle it. To nurture it. To honor it.
And wherever your feet land as you nurture that light thatās been entrusted to
becomes the path.
Maybe, the path is where your feet are,
For my upcoming 27th year and beyond, I hope this sentiment (that your path emerges naturally as you live your truth) rings deliciously true for meā as true as I know it is for you, the one reading this.
+ special shout out to my writing buddy and fellow Aunt Wendy watcher (How YOU dzoin š š¾š¤š«¶š¾) for encouraging me to push past the emotionally avoidant writerās block and put this post out there. Itās vulnerable, but writing this blogācapturing the uncertainty of how I feel in the present, how Iāve felt for most of my twenties, and the glimmers of certainty in how I hope to feel, is my own exercise in being where I am now. In embracing the unknown. In standing in my process (and trusting enough to share itāEEEK) instead of running from it.
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