The Path

The Path

Philosophical reflections following a lovely September walk along the Hogsmill river

Why is it so enticing? To see the path stretching out ahead of you? The freedom is wonderful – especially when it’s a path you’ve never trodden before. What will be around the next corner? The wonder is much enhanced when the purpose of the walk is just to walk the path. Functional walks to get somewhere on an important errand can also be enjoyable, but this is different. It becomes an existential thing where you simply exult to be alive, and able to do this walk.

The nature of the path is important, of course. It will be one that radiates the beauty of nature. And now you think, “How wonderful it is to be alive, on this day, in this place, where I have nothing to do except follow this path and see where it leads”. As well as the beauty, there will be tranquillity. And this is one of the qualities that most impinges on your senses. You can hardly believe that it is so still and peaceful. Where you can hear the quietness. Or when the beauty of birdsong cuts the chains of your heart so that your spirit soars with the song. For tranquillity, you may also need solitude. This, of course, is not loneliness, but a relishing of the opportunity to have this supreme moment to yourself. If you are with your dearly loved ones, the moment is enhanced, but only because it becomes a shared solitude. You are on the path, and you have it to yourself – at least as far as you can see and hear. And the experience of the path is not diminished if you are alone – and perhaps it is even enhanced – you are simply swapping the joy of a shared enchanting moment with your own, personal enchanting moment.

However, one of my big puzzles on the path is why I want to stop so often. Why is this? I’m really not sure, so I’m trying to think it through. It could be a – maybe – negative thing – that I am aware that I am using up the path by walking along it too quickly, and so I want to stop and hold it in my heart. Possibly, it’s also my desire to try and squeeze out of a moment an experience that can never be taken away from me – trying to solidify the experience – perhaps in the way a photograph tries to capture a moment. I say these responses may be negative, because I have learnt that you cannot grasp a moment and hold onto it. A path has to be travelled. Once you stop walking, you have stopped your journey – but not arrived anywhere. Time always keeps flowing forward, one second at a time, and we cannot halt it, or snatch at the reality of life and say, “I will keep hold of this as my souvenir” – as though the souvenir was the point of life, rather than the experience of life being its point.

But I think one of my reasons for stopping is about the sense of movement – that the path looks different when you have stopped compared to when you are travelling along it. The walk is too active – your body is moving; there is the sound of your feet, and perhaps things in your pockets; your very eyes are bouncing up and down with each step, as you survey the scene. Somehow, the movement is not doing justice to the tranquillity and beauty of the place, nor to the solitude of the moment. All these things are so outrageously, extravagantly present, that it dishonours them to just pass through. Movement is not doing justice to the perfection of the time-moment in which you find yourself, not giving due reverence to the sublime beauty of it, as though you are greedy for the next moment, as though this one is not complete fulfilment in itself. As when entering a great cathedral, the sanctity and awe of the place compels not just silence, but the need to stop. So, why are we stopping? Because we are aware that the splendour of this moment is overwhelming. As we pass along the path, we become aware that we are only taking in a fraction of the sacred beauty of this moment of “time in space” – shall we call it “life”? And the only adequate response is to stop in silent exultation that “I am here, now, in this place”. It is a moment of such completeness – or, rather, of such overflowing fullness, that we become aware that, “This is all just too much”. But then, having stopped, it is indeed too much; we cannot contain it; we cannot fully comprehend it. The experience both fills us and leaves us with the knowledge that we have only sipped from an ocean. And so we move on.

For, as well as stopping, there is the joy of the ongoing path. “The road runs ever on and on, and I must follow where it has gone”. On a long journey, for a time, it is as though the path is infinite – and that is how we want it to be. Later on, we will become tired and be glad when home looms into sight. But near the start of the path – especially the one not walked before – this sense of being already overcome by beauty – and there is another turn of the corner and then another to come, is an overwhelming joy. In that moment of stillness in our pauses, or as we travel along, we are one with the infinite, and we consciously experience that to be the case. Just now, I nearly said, “But near the start of the path – especially the one where the destination is unknown”. And, although, in a way, we do know the destination, for we will have a concept of where the end of the walk will take us to, but in another way, we don’t know the destination, for we don’t know what will be there. We cannot picture it, for we have never experienced it. In this way, although the destination is known about, our experience is completely focussed on the path. And perhaps this is another pleasure of the path: being fully focused on the experience of the present moment. All we can see is to the next corner, and what is beyond that, we do not know.

There is, perhaps, one more aspect to the path I want to consider, and that is the desire to look back at where I’ve just come from. As you walk the path, the route in view is so enticing. But, if you look backwards, the view is just as enticing. The beauty, tranquillity and solitude – which impart such a sense of fullness, remember – are just as great in that direction as going forwards. And you know it to be a wonderful path, because you’ve just walked it. I don’t think the looking backwards is a desire to do that bit again – though it might be – and, certainly, a truly beautiful walk is nearly as fulfilling if you do it again. There is the peculiarity that when you look back at the path, it looks very different from when you were looking forwards at it. Your perspective has changed. It looked wonderfully enticing when it was ahead of you, and it looks wonderfully enticing now it’s behind you – the same path, but now looking different. I cannot really come to terms with this desire to look backwards – though it is not overwhelmingly strong – but it is there. I don’t think it’s regret for what I can no longer do for the first time, because I’ve just done it. Perhaps it is simply back to that awareness that there is supreme sanctification in this moment of life. I want to savour it; to relish it; to not move on too quickly; to have a moment of thanksgiving and reflection; to acknowledge that that portion of the path was a gift of everlasting grace, and now I turn again to go forward and see what the next stretch holds.