Choices

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Henry David Thoreau

Have you ever had the unexpected gift of a free hour, or maybe even a whole afternoon, only to waste it away because you couldn’t decide how to spend your time? I now have a little more margin in my days than I once did, and I often find that there are so many ways I’d like to spend that precious time that I become paralyzed in the choosing.

When I first read this insightful quote from Thoreau, it intrigued me and caused me to consider how I might be able to apply his advice to my times of indecision. “Pursue some path,” he says. Pick something. Just pick something and begin, I can almost hear him say, his encouragement echoing from the past; his distant words of wisdom finding their way to me. Maybe my problem is that I put too much weight into my choice. Maybe I just need to decide and pursue.

But no, there’s more to it than that — the second part of his quote tells me there’s more: “[some path] in which you can walk with love and reverence.” This rings so true to me; so true to my heart and soul. I can’t just pick any path, make any choice. I have to choose the one that I am able to walk along with love. Because why do it if I can’t do it with love?

I forget this sometimes; that life really is just about love. I guess it’s easier for me to see that in the bigger picture — my family, my friends, my God — especially at this time of year as we approach Thanksgiving and are reminded to focus on our blessings. But can I bring that down to the everyday? Can I apply that love to the mundane, to even the seemingly inconsequential choice of how I will spend my free hour? And in so doing, wouldn’t that transform the inconsequential into the meaningful? Wouldn’t those free hours chosen in love and reverence add up to a day full of significance and purpose, which would then become a week followed by a month and, dare I say, a year?

And yet there’s one more valuable part to Thoreau’s weighty words: “however narrow and crooked.” Set between commas, it seems almost irrelevant; like it doesn’t need to be there. And yet it is there. It is because it’s essential. Not only do I need to choose my path, and not only should my path be one that I walk along with love, but the path I choose may also be narrow and crooked; which means that perhaps it is too narrow for others to be on my path with me and too meandering to run parallel with the path of others. It is my path — narrow and crooked and beautiful and messy and protected and dangerous and tame and wild — my path that I walk along with love.

The trick, I know, is to remember this. It’s not enough to catch a glimpse of a fleeting realization only to have it fade away with the passage of hours — days, if I’m lucky. I must wake every morning and remind myself — and then again throughout the day — of my new-found intent to pursue my wonderfully wandering path in love.

Photo by Elwin de Witte on Unsplash