The Pathless Path

It’s been a long time. Initially I deliberately wanted to take a break from writing blogs because 1. Surprisingly, I became very much occupied after I became a full-time musician. 2. After writing 124 blogs, my expectations for each blog I write had inflated so much that I felt like I have nothing to share. However, lately I observed that my notes app (OneNote) is getting overloaded with new notes that I’m keeping in pending status without moving them to their respective sections. Basically, too high expectations was the form of resistance I was facing. Now it’s time to move the boulder first, so I’m writing a simple one for this week. Got this prompt through a book name – “The Pathless Path”. I haven’t read the book, maybe I’ll read it soon. But the title is very much straight forward. However, the idea outputs a lot of great reminders for all of us.  

This life, your life, is a journey that is without a path. What does that mean?

1. You are Unique. I think this first pointer needs no explanation. But I’ll still try to emphasize this point if you’re not feeling like you are unique right now. Your background/ your past, your current situation, your dream, your vision, your qualities, skills, people you’re surrounded with, the blend of all these are variables make you very unique isn’t it? 
2. Hence your path will be unique. Whatever you’re aspiring for, with respect to you and your background, it is unique right?
3. Hence do not try to copy-paste someone else’s path on your path. 
4. But that does not mean others’ paths/journeys are not useful/helpful to Know. I’ve heard this many times – “I don’t read any non-fiction books, they do not work for me because the author does not know my life, blah blah blah”. Books & mentor’s role is very crucial. I had mentioned the same in a different analogy back in 2021 – “Life is like a lab to experiment! You have to try out and find out things you seek. This Analogy also justifies why you shouldn’t try something that you already know is dangerous”. Similarly, when someone has made a manual for their experiment, we may not do the same experiment, but we can learn a lot from their experiment of how to go about our own experiment, isn’t it? At the least, we’ll have a better idea of it if we know their experiments than not knowing. You’ll see that the problem you’re trying to solve is not so unique or novel, it’s a slight variant of another’s problem. 
5. There’s no right or wrong path. 
6. Do not be afraid to go unconventional.
7. Knowing yourself is the key. When this – It is a Pathless Path, is the case, the success rate of your life in you achieving a life of fulfillment is first, completely relying on you knowing yourself well enough. To create your unique path, you must know what is it that you are, what you want your life to be according to your nature for you to be fulfilled, etc. I’ve seen this too many times, where people think they’ve realized something about themselves but are still doing many things for the wrong reasons. (wrong here means, not what they actually intend to do with their life). Knowing yourself is the key to designing your life’s path without any regrets.
8. Once you know, do. Once you know what your core most being wants, do what it tells you to do. But of course, this is dangerous advice without mentioning the previous point. You can follow your true self only when you know that it is your true self that you’re listening to, not your tendencies and societal impressions looping in your mind. 
9. Be intentional. Constantly ensure your thoughts, words, and actions are aligned to the path you’ve envisioned and determined to tread on. Inculcate and eliminate thoughts, words, and actions relative to that path.
10. 2 tablespoons of Surrender. Again, I’m deliberately mentioning this point after the previous point because surrender without intentional living may be an excuse for laziness, procrastination, or inaction of any other form. However, this idea and fact that this life is a “Pathless path” should liberate you from many situations where you get overwhelmed and stressed for reasons that are very trivial when you view it from the grand scheme of things ( here, your path). It can be anything, so why stress? If something you tried doesn’t work, try something else.

Hope this scratched your brain to think more about your life path and about how you can be even more intentional and then be stress-free. Very interesting and valuable blogs coming in the coming weeks. 

Thank you

Sanath Kumar Naibhi