Day 187 "Forward-Backwards"

There are mysteries all around me. So many unknown and unexpected things that make up my own world.

I am in the habit of controlling, or rather, trying to control my experiences, the outcome, the whole journey.

A life of walking paths I have already walked in order to maintain what I consider the safest possible route, one with the most predictable outcome.

I think these are familiar paths, but always something has changed, always I end up tripping over something that was not there before, always life has other plans for me.

The past is a destination for those that believe they have been moving forward.

I have become, in many ways, the complacent nature of a mind that seeks the illusion of safety rather than the free spirit that I know that I truly am.

I have spent so many years trying to rediscover old mysteries and dust off old treasures that have long lost their appeal. All these years ignorantly believing that I was heading back home, or that I was heading anywhere familiar at all.

I have become, in many ways, the desire to rush in just to slow down, the desire to take every path that I know as far as I know it, and no further. The truth is, I have become a ship anchored to the safety of a harbor I can never call home.

I have, in so many ways, been living backwards while trying to move forward. Believing in the illusion of safety that only the expected can bring, and I have been mistaken for thinking this was ever possible.

There is no safety, no road that will allow you to retrace every step you took along your journey, and there is no controlling the mysteries that you think you want to find.

Walking forward-backwards will only lead me to who I think I should be, and not who I could be, and never to who I will be.

Walking forward-backwards will only keep me in constant war with that part of myself that desires more than memory alone, that part of me that desires only the safety of what I already know.

Walking forward-backwards will only lead me to the things I have seen before, and blind me from seeing the beautiful mysteries just around the next bend.

Walking forward-backwards will weaken my resolve to find out who I am supposed to be, who I could be, and who I will become; which is the greatest mystery of them all.

Walking forward-backwards will not lead me back home.