Let’s Walk the Non-Path
“What path to take in life?” This is perhaps one of the most universally asked questions by human beings, an archetypal question of sorts. The Dao De Jing tells us that “the path that can be seen is not the path”. But then what is the path? Perhaps the poet Antonio Machado can help us. He says: “Oh walker, there is no path… One makes the path as one walks”. To walk the non-path is something we must all do, but we have a choice in this task.
Will we be hermits? Seek seclusion and renounce our identities and possessions? Will we allow our egos to dissolve and embrace the contemplative wholeness of reality? Or will we choose to not walk the non-path alone and seek a compromise? Holding hands might make the journey easier, but it also comes with complications: Biases, vices, traumas, impulses, projections. We are, evolutionarily speaking, social beings and therefore influenced by our context more than we like to admit. However, to change society we must live in society, no matter how hard or complex it might be. I don’t have the answers and I’m wary of whoever claims they do, but I do know that developing our capacity to deal with complexity will help, regardless of the path we chose.
Since the rise of the Enlightenment, our whole world has been built on premises of linearity, mechanicism, and, ultimately, scientificism (not to speak of growthism). It has brought us a long way, but it has reached a point of saturation. Its bases are eroding and it’s time we develop the capacity to face the complexity of reality without holding on to dogmas or being induced into crippling anxiety. It’s time we shed ourselves of the narratives we’ve been told, and, instead of writing a “new better narrative”, empower ourselves, all of us, every last one of us, to be the co-authors of our shared reality that we have always truly been capable of being. It’s not simple, it’s not easy, but it’s precisely because of this that I believe that any approach on these terms can attempt to meet the depth, complexity, and beauty of life.
If you disagree with what I said, if you don’t, or if you just want to talk, I have an invitation for you: Shall we go for a walk down the non-path?
Note: I wrote this short text as a teaser to a podcast I was recently featured in. If you were indeed teased the link for the whole thing is down below. I also share some practices of mine and do a guided Taiji meditation. Thank you Hendrik Berberich for the awesome conversation!
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2GuF9t4fLh6st5ZHmKPuSZ?si=uLvlWoreS06ZwJx_5bICGA
