breaking paths

A Five Minute Friday post:

There is a difference between a path and a road. We frequently hear or use the phrase "on the right (or wrong) path", but seldom do we use the word "road". And I think that's important.

There isn't a road up a treacherous mountain peak: there is a path. There isn't a road through a tangled wood: there is a grown-over path. 

A road is established. Developed and planned or simply used and reused by countless weary feet, by so many rolling tires, that it becomes an entity unto itself. It cuts through the wilderness, a slice of establishment and civilization through the entropy of the wonderful world. But a path is different. A path can be old, yes, but retains a wildness. Not a slice of civilization but rather a sliver, a tiny artery. Or it may be very new, with only a handful of travellers having walked its journey. 

And indeed it may be so new that it has never been before. And that is our life, isn't it? The finding of a path, our path. My path may run share space with the paths found by others who have walked this world before me. My path may run alongside another path, or two, or several, for a time or for life - isn't that community? Isn't that marriage? Isn't that family? - but it is still my own, found by my eyes, my spirit, my heart, broken by my feet, my life, my soul.

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Five-Minute Fridays is a blog prompt and link party by The Gypsy Mama. Five minutes of writing - no planning, no editing, just writing.